sometimes I see strange things

thought I’d post a quick photo “from the road” before I return to chongqing in a couple days

I was walking through a street market in haikou, the capital city of hainan province (an island located in the south china sea), and saw this knot of a goat lying across the table, skinned, folded up, and ready to go. one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen in a while…

…that was until I came upon the woman with a blow torch down the way.

I’ll post a video when a get back.  rabbit-lovers beware.

–VIDEO UPDATE–

mmk, here it is.  after I passed the “balled up little goat” stall, I came upon a woman with a blow torch.  next to a cage of little white rabbits.

the rabbits were being sold for food, of course, but they weren’t being sold live.  and just how you’d expect to buy a pre-plucked chicken while at the market, de-furred rabbits, you might imagine, would also be the norm.

so the woman was squatting in front of a pile of dead rabbits, skinned for the most part, and using the blow torch to remove excess fur and hair.  essentially I saw a woman blow torching the crap out of a pile of naked rabbit carcasses.  be sure to note the small pools of blood that surround her and the cage.

so, as soon as my lower jaw finds it’s way back up to my face, I begin asking questions, which, in retrospect, seemed to annoy the lady a bit… I mean, she was in the middle of something after all…

but so I asked if those were in fact rabbits and what it was she was doing.  then asked why she was burning them.  pretty sure there was some confusion, though, because my pronunciation for the word 烧, or shao, meaning “to burn,” wasn’t great (I thought it was more like ‘shou’) and in any case, it sounds alot like the word 小, or xiao, meaning “small.”  so while I was trying to ask why she was burning the crap out of the little guys, she answered back, I think, “yes, these are little white rabbits”

I’d be curious what the other chinese speakers in the room think

at any rate, that was the deal at the market.  we found cobras a few stalls down, but I’ll save that video for another day