Cooking up

One other thing I managed to get done during my limited time in Yangshou was a cookery class, and despite a few 'ify' moments I was quite good. I even impressed myself enough to eat my arch enemy of the food world, The Onion, and also it's sidekick, The Mushroom. I've learn't three dishes, each will be difficult to recreate back home, but not impossible, so anyone coming to mine for dinner in the future can expect something more than my signature dish of Cheese on a Plate. Bring your own rice though, they didn't teach us that.

The purpose of this post is to tell you about the only downside I encountered in Yangshou. Our head chef, Panda, began the lesson by taking us to the local market to obtain the vegitable componants for our meals. Upon entry we're struck by how big the market turns out to be. After appearing as only a few stalls in an ally way, the whole area opens up to reveal a huge covered markert space that continues through to another. On sale here in the center are carefully laid out collections vegitables, nuts and fruits, whilst along the left are washing bowls filled with various water based meats such as fish, eels and bullfrogs. I was upset to see one frog with the left half of his skull missing, but both eyes still in place. Panda wonders if we're all ok to see dog meat, and thinking after you've seen chicken and beef, all meat looks much the same, we agree it's not ideal, but it shouldn't be a problem.

We continue forward into the second market area to be hit by horrific scenes of dead chickens and ducks. I've seen these animals dead before, infact they've been everywhere lately, mostly hanging off handle bars of scooters rushing by, but this is like nothing i've seen before. Along the edges of the market are open rooms fronted by tables. One the tables the birds layed out with their heads hanging backwards over the edge and blood still dripping. A glance to the back of the rooms presents a barral spilling with blood and birds in cages waiting their turn. Needing to look away, to my right I see the market is stacked full with more overfilled cages of chickens, ducks, rabbits and something else (can't remember what). It was like a really depressing pet shop, and like anyone else would have done, I considered the feesability of buying them all and releasing them somewhere safe, but of course it'd never work

Looking back to the rooms on the left, I saw a pig carcus hanging up, and that was ok, I've seen lots of butcher shops hanging their stock out in the streets lately. In my disturbed state of mind however, I was surprised to see pigs had paws. It took a good while for the penny to drop, but a another glance to the back of the room did the trick. Three big cages full dogs, the nice, light, fluffy labrador type ones, stand in waiting. Looking back at the carcus I realise that there's nothing pig-like about it at all really, and remember pigs have trotters anyway.

I, along with all the others, am just about done with it all and am heading for the nearest exit but not knowing where to look in the meantime. I don't want to witness anything meet it's maker although I am surrounded by the potential. I do get out but do tread on some intestines on the way, I'm grateful it hadn't occured to me to wear flipflops that morning.

It was a silent walk back to the kitchen as we all toyed with the idea of becoming vegitarian. Our first task at our counters was to prepare the meat, which we did quietly. Although to be fair our cooking was so good, by the time our meals were done we'd close to forgotten our plans never to eat meat again, and the shock of the dogs got replaced for a short while by the shock discovery of the ingrediants to sweet & sour pork.