Tailors and Live Marketplaces

I'm not sure what Hong Bang translates as, but in my mind it means "hole in the wall tailor". A tiny (maybe 100 sq. ft.?) room, a single fluorescent light bulb, antique sewing machines and rusty scissors don't stop the 3 tailors from making handsome, well-made clothing.
We all picked out high quality English wool for our suits with coordinating shirts. M.L.I.S. picked out a beautiful gray/brown wool with a blue pinstripe and a conservative blue shirt. She is having a suit jacket made and 2 skirts, one long, one short. The Cell Phone Translator service was utilized. A price was agree upon. It was quite the experience.

One thing traveling to another culture does is make you appreciate things back home. When we go grocery shopping in Canada, you have to use your imagination to picture the live animal that was once your ground beef/chicken breast/pot roast. When you go grocery shopping in China, there is nothing left to the imagination. You get to pick out your live duck (or fish or eel or toad (!) or chicken or whatever else), they may or may not kill it for you before they put it in a clear plastic bag for you to take home.

You are left with de-feathering, gutting, cutting it up as well as cooking it - and eating it.

(Personal aside from M.L.I.S.:

I had 4-H calves growing up. I didn't eat beef throughout my teen-age years because I had "known" the live calf. Now you may understand why the marketplace in China was a challenge for me.)

We walked to a marketplace in Nanjing where we saw many interesting food choices. They say the Chinese will eat anything with legs except the tables and anything that flies except the planes. That's pretty accurate. On the edge of one "tank" containing live fish, there was a tray with severed fish heads and tails balancing precariously. One determined fish in a tank wanted out badly. He finally jumped high enough to knock the tray off the top of the tank and Bentley, Miranda, and I jumped about a foot in the air as fish guts went crashing to the floor beside us.

Miranda wanted to know why all the ducks were in the cages. I told her they were for people to buy to eat for dinner. She was quite upset about it. She wanted one for a pet. When she went to bed I told her a bedtime story about the beautiful Princess Ling Ling who freed all the ducks in the marketplace. She felt better after that.
Bentley wanted a picture of all these dead ducks.

The lady behind the duck counter primped and posed for the picture. Since Bentley had only taken a shot of the birds, I made him take another one of the lady.

Cause who wouldn't want their picture taken with a bunch of dead naked birds???