Food

Not sure if I’ve written about this: corn on the cob is sold on the street here.  Men with food carts sell them usually near bus stops.  You can also get sweet potatoes or stinky tofu.  Chinese people love tofu, which I never knew before moving here.  But, the corn on the cob continues to blow my mind.  It’s not uncommon to be walking down the street, even early in the morning, and see a man or woman squatting down near a bus stop and rapidly devouring boiled corn on the cob, without salt, pepper or butter. 

I went into my local Vanguard this evening to buy a few things for dinner.  I had a bag of pasta in the kitchen, and I wanted to grab some beef.  The beef and pork are all mixed together.  I picked up a slab of meat that was covered in plastic wrap and turned to an old woman and asked her if it was beef or not.  She said it was beef.  I stared at the meat a moment, thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to mix beef, spaghetti and tomato sauce.  It didn’t look like the freshest of pieces of meat, and none of the others seemed much better.  As I stood there waffling, the butcher came out from the back room with this enormous knife.  This butcher’s knife was as long as my forearm and about 8 inches wide.  The old woman began to speak to him.  She then pulled out a plastic bag from her purse, and in the bag was a dog’s hind leg.  The butcher took the leg and began chopping it into pieces on his wooden block, which is not behind a counter, and which I was standing right next to.  I could smell the meat, and the sound of bone crunching echoed off the walls of my brain.  I hurried away without buying any meat. …