Be still my beating heart

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Just finishing up our 5 day stint in Hong Kong. It's a fabulous place to be if you enjoy food and shopping, especially since we're here during Lunar New Year. It's like Christmas...but on steroids. Needless to say, we have fully embraced the Year of the Pig by gorging on the incredible food HK has to offer.

Except Peter can't ever have fish again.

Here's why.

We were innocently walkiing along the "wet market" in Central one day. The wet market is kinda like a farmer's market with different stalls selling different produce, meat, flowers, etc. If you've ever been to a Cantonese restaurant, you will know that we Cantonese are obsessed with freshness. Those tanks of fish in restaurants aren't there for decoration, y'know.

Anyway, we passed by a seafood stall. There were oysters on ice, crabs trying to claw their way out of their own doom. And of course, there were fish. Some were in tanks, some on ice with their gills gasping their last breath. There were also fish that had been cleaned and hacked into pieces. You would think that no one would want the fish that had already been filleted because you couldn't tell whether it was truly fresh or not.

Except, we could see their tiny hearts were still beating ! At that point, Peter's heart nearly stopped beating.

Now that's fresh.

Now that's a lot of half dead fish for 7 million people. If they're lucky they can swing the fish in their tiny apartments!

BTW High time for a good Irish, American, French, possibly Mongolian! breakfast... Congee is nasty.. Peter

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Comments

[Clark Duenas]

too cool for school
Thanx for the update. I love this travel blog. It's almost like traveling with you, well almost. :)

[Raymond Ha]

Marine Life Brutality?
Did Peter see them beat the fish with little billy clubs before they hack them to pieces? Those butchers would give LAPD a run for their money in the field of professional beatings with blunt objects. Peter, ask Dinh about how our grandpa used to "prepare" the live turtles we raised... then you won't feel so bad about the fish and their little hearts.