To market, wet market

I emailed my family this week about a trip I had made to a 'wet market' close by my apartment here in Zhujiang New Town, Guangzhou. Why is it called a wet market? Well, apparently it is due to the fact that the vendors are constantly 'wetting' down the vegetables, fish and meat. They sell food here very close to it's natural state. Chinese supermarkets, even more so than in Australia, over-package their perishables. All the fruit and veg here are wrapped and wrapped again - 3 tomatoes on a tray and glad-wrapped, 2 cucumbers wrapped together, 1 apple on a tray wrapped etc. So much waste! And the products - as is often the case with supermarkets - fall well short of the quality you can find at your local green grocer, or as is the case here, wet market.

The fruit and veg at the wet market were vibrantly coloured, impossibly fresh and much more flavoursome than those I had purchased the week before at Jusco supermarket. The merchandising wasn't fancy, just piles and piles of gorgeous, fresh from the farm fruit and veg.




In my email, I was admittedly a 'bit of a girl', squeamishly describing how you could buy fish - freshly plucked from the tank and then killed, descaled, gutted and filleted in front of you, and how I instead opted for pork and tofu as my protein choices. I also gabbed on about how there was a part of the market where they would kill the chicken on the spot for you, and how I didn't want to meet my meal in advance.

My very wise father sent me a note with his thoughts on my squeamishness and his admiration for the way the Chinese do their best with what they have...

"In many respects I like their simplistic approach for unlike us and not having an oversupply of electricity they use those natural things to keep things fresh – viz

• Use the water that fish swim around in to keep them fresh before they are needed (I bet at the fish shop they had oxygen going into the tank to keep the fish swimming)

• As for Chickens – keep them in a cage (which is where you normally keep them) until they are processed = fresh meat"

Thanks Dad, for the reality check and different perspective. You're right (you usually bloody are, which can be frustrating at times!). Next time I'm at the wet markets, I won't be such a big girls' blouse and instead I'll admire the measures the vendors take to keep electricity use and costs down, their lack of superfluous packaging, and the unquestionable freshness of the products they're selling.


The pork shop


One of the many fish shops