Guangzhou fish market is no doubt the craziest place I’ve seen so far on the trip. I don’t even think we were there at a busy time and the place was incredibly lively! We stood out a little wandering around in our bright t-shirts gawping at the various tanks of fish and other strange unrecognised creatures and attracted quite a bit of attention. There were groups of young lads who seemed to be hanging from the sides of stalls and stood on mountains of crates who stared and shouted hello as we walked by. My favorite was one guy who had obviously recognised our bewilderment who threw open his arms out wide and yelled “Welcome to Guanzhou” down the alley to us.

This market is huge and I would really recommend going for a walk around it, that is so long as you’re not the type who doesn’t like to upset themselves watching things get killed (perhaps a silly thing to say on a vegetarian blog?!). It’s really fascinating. You’ll see things you’ve never seen and get a glimpses of a completely different way of life. I don’t eat fish, but I just love places like this. So active, everyone with their own little business trying to make enough to get by. The atmosphere was hectic (or maybe it just looked that way to me as I was being bombarded with so many new sights and sounds), but in general spirits seemed to be pretty high. A big contrast to the bored counter attendant or zombified shelf stacker at Tescos.

Unfortunately we were so absorbed in gawping at things that we didn’t really take any photos. Well actually we took one:

I mean, what is this!? And what on earth would you do with it? And how does that whole thing fit in that shell? Not sure if you can tell from this picture but these things were huge, the weird wrinkly thing hanging out of the shell was well over a foot long. Possibly one of the ugliest edible thing I’ve ever seen.

While we were at the market we saw the first thing of the trip that really made me stop in my tracks. Stop reading here if you are a bit squeemish. As we were leaving the market we walked behind a van and saw a woman crouching on the floor with a knife in her hand. There was a pile of frogs on the floor to her right. In front there was a pile of guts. To her left there was pile of frogs without guts… Just as we walked past she picked one of the frogs up and with a quick stab and a squeltch removed the guts and then threw the guttless frog to her left where it landed with a splat in it’s new pile. It’s not the kind of thing we’re used to seeing at home, but perhaps it should be? I really think people ought to have more of a connection like this with what they are eating, how it is kept and ultimately how it is killed for them to eat.

The fish market is on the north side of the river, just west of Shamian Island near where you get the ferry across the river. Map here.