We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are. - Anais Nin
ShOpPiNg FoR cHiCkEn(S) WiTh MaMa — ThE qUeSt FoR pEnUlTiMaTe FrEsHnEsS
Part I.
Somewhere in South Western China … recently:
My ganma (god mother), two friends and I set out on a mission to buy chicken(s). We being closer to the top side of the surrounding hills and the purveyors of the chickens being down slope quite a way, this started as do all great adventures in the middle kingdom, with a longish walk toward where I knew not precisely and whereat something, or a lot of something I’ve never seen the like of before, was bound to happen.
I wasn’t born on a farm or raised on one either, but I’m no idiot. I understood we were on a quest for the kind of freshness only found in places like this …
… and that it would most certainly entail the purchase of live chicken(s). Just how such a thing would transpire exactly, the transacting of it all, not to mention the – well – dispatching of it all – none of that was at all clear to me as yet, but prior experience led me to expect the details would be riveting and uncommonly photogenic. I was not wrong.
We were on foot at a fairly lazy pace for the better part of an hour, though it might have only been half that long. The passage of time always has an elastic quality on such days and in such places; the acquisition of chickens was THE goal of the day, to be met before lunch.
A walk in the greener parts of rural China never fails to entrance me. It is all so lush, both the cultivated and the wild. My pictures never succeed in fully rendering the quiet magnificence of the people on their land, but I keep trying...
You may think you’ve got quite a green thumb. Within the realm of your friends and neighbours, you may very well be quite justified in such self proclaimed accomplishment. I’m here to tell you – you’ve got nothing on China. Vast stretches of the China I’ve seen so far are extremely hilly or mountainous, one’s choice of terminology here depending on at what point one reckons a hill has surpassed hill-dom or a mountain should be deemed too small to rightly be called a mountain. Whichever, the topography which I am feebly attempting to give words to is no less relentlessly steep for all that reckoning, and this fact has never stopped anyone from planting the heck out of it with all manner of gorgeous things to eat.
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Observant readers will have long since noted the prevalence of corn …
Let me also point out that roads, highways and other such intrusions of modern human infrastructure are welcome enough in their place, but wherever they leave off, something will be planted. In many places, one might easily reach out the window from a not too quickly passing car and pick a bean or two, though I think that would be a bit rude and properly frowned upon.
There are no fences that I ever saw. I suppose that the people thereabouts long ago determined just where their corn patch ends and someone else’s begins, so what need for fences? Robert Frost would surely have admired a great many walls in China as their purposes seem mostly to be of a more neighbourly or practical bent, like keeping the rain off of the supper table. Even then, three is often considered more than enough to do the job. One lonely wall may set a person musing about whose it was and what became of its comrades, so neatly severed, long since – or yesterday – carted off stone by stone, now nowhere to be seen …
We made our descent, leisurely, and occasionally met with a section of the switchback highway that meanders back and forth from way down below on upwards to some great peak I never quite got to.
Perhaps by now, readers less taken with my wordy and somewhat digressive way of telling a story are wondering when I’ll get around to the chickens again – exhibit A:
This strident example of the sort we were after was not a candidate for that morning’s selection as it turns out – clearly, it was a lucky day for her. After a bit of hello-ing, smiling and offers of tobacco and sunflower seeds from our hosts, mama headed off around a corner with the lady of the house to survey the day’s offerings, meanwhile I busied myself getting to know everyone else.
In case it isn’t obvious, I fall madly in love with many of the folks I meet in China and these lovely people were no exception – gracious as all get-out and not the least bit bothered about the laowai (foreigner) with the camera.
Initially, the youngsters thought it was a lot more fun to dodge my efforts rather than let me catch them with the lens …
… that is until I’d seduced them with the instant review function.
They were more than a little delighted with seeing themselves and their elders looking back at them from the tiny screen. The youngest soon shifted rather effortlessly from this:
… to this:
… to this!
You’ll be wanting to hear more about the chickens, no doubt. The procedure quickly revealed itself. After mama had had a good look and decided on four worthy of her intentions, they were rather unceremoniously fetched up by their wings and brought for a weigh-in …
This was accompanied by no small amount of dark humour which the chickens would have utterly failed to appreciate had they understood it. There may be a great blessing granted in the possession of a modest bird brain, especially if one is destined to be soup.
Step one: a quietly ominous looking, well used cleaver is brought to cut a bit of cloth into strips – this to bind their feet for the weighing, and so it begins.
Any escape to a life of bug hunting thus vanquished, the ‘condemned’ as I began to think of them, were assessed one by one with first decimal place precision. A sense of the jig being up did appear to take hold in one who made a futile break for it.
With the others, resignation had apparently set in.
At this stage, a lucky cluck might be found wanting and exchanged for one with a bit more heft, as it went with us. Note to chickens – consider how a kernel or two fewer may prolong your days; in this company, in this place, that doesn’t sound like a bad deal.
Step two: jiangjia (to bargain). The whole business from beginning to end was very much a family affair.
Everyone had an ear or an eye on the proceedings, but as far as I could tell, it was herself who bargained with mama directly. Once they had arrived at a price, mama presented it to the men of the house – this much for those three and so much for the other – who, finding no fault with it, nodded their assent.
Having settled the matter to everyone’s satisfaction, business-like demeanours took up with the fog.
Yaode, yaode!.. Ming nian jian, ha?… Hao!… Man zou, ha? Man zou…
(Excellent! See you next year, eh? For sure! Go easy, eh? Go easy…) …
p.s. (… as of this posting, about 11 days since the events recounted here, two of those chickens yet live! This story is not over – check back for part II… )
71 Comments so far
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I am helping you get onto Google.
You're going to take me to these places, yes?
Morning robin,
I'm having my morning coffee, and I am very much enjoying 'rambling' through your blog. As an urban gardener, I must say the vegetables in your pictures look so mouth-watering and I feel like I would just like to reach out, grab one of the screen and eat it. I am also enjoying seeing your local company, the places they live and you amongst them. Hopefully, development will never reach these parts of China. I remember the film about that boat going up the river to the 5 gorges and the people having to move their gardens higher and higher up to make way for that awful monstrosity of an embankment. You know the film I am sure, but I don't think we saw it together. On the weekend, I will show your blog to Susan, my Chinese friend from Brock U. She is from Nanjing and has family living in the countryside, actually in the area where they had all these earthquakes and mudslides. She is a young, but very traditional person and I think she'll enjoy browsing your blog and these photos.
I'll send you a private e-mail about what and how I'm doing later on.
Ooops, what's that noise in my living room next door. You won;t believe it: It's a squirrel with a peanut in his mouth who's knocked over one of my washi arrangements in his search for a pot to bury this groundnut. That's too close for comfort. Need to chase the little invader of my privacy a bit.
Hi Robin,
Beautiful photos and what a great trip, except of course for the chickens. My gardening efforts this summer were lousy, two eggplants, count them, oh, I'm done counting already so I'm glad your neighbours are having better luck.
I liked your first paragraph in particular, reminded of living in rural Thailand where as soon as I realized that the only thing I could predict with certainty was that at some time every day, somebody would come and take me somewhere to do something. With that little mantra in my mind I gave up trying to plan and let everyone else do it for me.
i wonder what happened to you…
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