Scorpions anyone?

With our bellies full we were ready for our foray into the marketplace. We entered a maze of alleyways to discover all sorts of treasures, the most interesting being food items. A few were things, such as fresh-roasted corn on the cob, that you might just as easily find at home – and then there were lots of really strange, somewhat scary edibles. At least some people consider them to be edibles, while the wimps amongst us cringe. Probably at the top of the cringe-making list were the scorpions and grasshoppers, skewered and ready for roasting (photo #1) – along with unknowable things in various stages of metamorphosis (photo #2).

There were also some little birds or animals that I am showing you in the third photo. Somehow I hope they are birds, because I don’t like to think about what little furry things they might have been. If anyone knows what these are, please post me a comment, which I will retrieve later. Oh yes, and please do leave me some comments or questions. I will be able to retrieve and respond to them when I get home.

There were also the starfish (crunchy?) and apparently we missed the seahorses, which Chris informed me are quite popular. The fried dough-ball things that the girl in blue was turning to perfection, looked quite delicious and there were skewered fruits that had been dipped in liquid candy, which had hardened (plums, small apples of some kind, didn’t know what the green things were). Now it was definitely our turn to gawk, and we did it quite unabashedly and clicked our mini-cameras here there and everywhere.

After the food lane, we headed down the drygoods lane and Cindy bargained for a teapot. I was too overwhelmed by the surplus of stuff to buy anything. I just proceeded to gawk and made mental notes about what I might want to purchase on a return visit. Bargaining is tricky when you have a hard time remembering your numbers, and being a bit of a softy doesn’t help either. Mexico has prepared me somewhat for this activity, but the Chinese vendors puts the Mexicans I have encountered to shame.

Soon, I will tell you about our journey back to Lang Fang, but first, a little about our adorable preschoolers.