In most of Europe and the U.S. when we say "fresh" we mean food that was caught/picked/plucked some weeks ago and then preserved by freezing or removing all the fluids for transport to our far away homes.
Even though I've seen it many times before, it still comes as a surprise to see what the Chinese shopper defines as fresh food.
In this fishing village on Lantau island, the morning's catch is sorted into plastic bowls and kept alive by pumping air through the water (you can see the plastic pipes feeding the air in the photo but not the electric pump and attached car battery under the trolley).
To the locals, "fresh" means still alive when bought.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Fresh meat anyone?
In more recent visits to Hong Kong (it was a regular stop-over for me during the 1980s) I've struggled to find any of the old flavour of the place. Wander through the glitzy shopping malls on the island or Kowloon and you could be in almost any developed city on the planet, surrounded as you are by shop after shop selling over-priced designer goods in an effort to pay the naturally exorbitantly high rent.
Heck, even Mong Kok - once home to professionals (photographers who came for the specialist camera shops and hookers who worked the brothels that lined the narrow streets) is now the location for 5-star hotels, computer supermarkets and Starbucks.
So a trip into the New Territories was taken. It's years since I was last in this hinterland of Hong Kong's administrative region and, to be honest, had never really understood why the British Government had felt so compelled to hand the whole of Hong Kong back when the lease on part of the territory ran out. Until I saw what had become of the area I remembered as sleepy villages and gentle farm land.
The whole area is a sea of high-rise apartment blocks with fast train access into Kowloon. All became clear - the "independent" territory that would have remained would have consisted of millions of people with nowhere to work and no way to feed themselves.
Anyway - tucked away in one of the newly developed streets was this "traditional" street market. Traditional, not in the sense of having been there since the Tang dynasty (the street itself looked no more than 30-40 years old) but in the sense that traditional Chinese shopping values remained intact.
Fresh food was piled on stalls all along the street for passers-by to pick up and examine (see the lady in the photo who I watched pick over an entire tray of pork chops until she found one she liked) and the sale of hopelessly useless (as well, it's fair to say, unrealistically cheap) goods.
Needing fresh AA batteries for my camera I bought a dozen Chinese zinc-carbon examples (the best available) from a stall for a few HK$ (around US 5c each) discovering over the next couple of hours that each and every one of them was completely devoid of electricity.
Some things never change. Hong Kong enterprise - gotta love it!
Heck, even Mong Kok - once home to professionals (photographers who came for the specialist camera shops and hookers who worked the brothels that lined the narrow streets) is now the location for 5-star hotels, computer supermarkets and Starbucks.
So a trip into the New Territories was taken. It's years since I was last in this hinterland of Hong Kong's administrative region and, to be honest, had never really understood why the British Government had felt so compelled to hand the whole of Hong Kong back when the lease on part of the territory ran out. Until I saw what had become of the area I remembered as sleepy villages and gentle farm land.
The whole area is a sea of high-rise apartment blocks with fast train access into Kowloon. All became clear - the "independent" territory that would have remained would have consisted of millions of people with nowhere to work and no way to feed themselves.
Anyway - tucked away in one of the newly developed streets was this "traditional" street market. Traditional, not in the sense of having been there since the Tang dynasty (the street itself looked no more than 30-40 years old) but in the sense that traditional Chinese shopping values remained intact.
Fresh food was piled on stalls all along the street for passers-by to pick up and examine (see the lady in the photo who I watched pick over an entire tray of pork chops until she found one she liked) and the sale of hopelessly useless (as well, it's fair to say, unrealistically cheap) goods.
Needing fresh AA batteries for my camera I bought a dozen Chinese zinc-carbon examples (the best available) from a stall for a few HK$ (around US 5c each) discovering over the next couple of hours that each and every one of them was completely devoid of electricity.
Some things never change. Hong Kong enterprise - gotta love it!
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