To Market, To Market

Since it has been a few weeks without proper updates, I'll backtrack just a bit...cue reverse time travel music...

It is a couple of days before Halloween (you know, the American festivity where foreigners celebrate by making yet another trip to the Beijing IKEA for a coffee table) when Z and I are exploring the neighborhood in which our first visitors plan to stay. The neighborhood is lined with shop after shop; winter jackets are debuted in store front windows next to street food vendors selling various meats on sticks. Cars and taxis and pedestrians and bicyclists are jockeying for a spot in front of one another before the traffic lights signal red again, slowing up the process of progress. Back on the sidewalks, in between puffy coats and shiny puffy vests with fake fur hoods, the stereo surround sound of employees' voices fills the air to the beat of the music blasting from within busy shops, "New face creams on sale! Leather boots only 500 RMB! Get your sunglasses here! Today there is a clearance on bottled water! Buy another puffy vest, you can never have enough! Come into my shop...no, come into my shop...Everything you need is right here!"

As we turn onto the street of our future visitors' guest house, everything gets quiet in a crunchy-fall-leaves-under-foot kind of way. Old men are riding their bicycles through the narrow hutong alley, carting behind them dozens of spring onions the size of American leeks, or balancing eight feet tall by eight feet wide stacks of cardboard for recycling, or with each forward motion they are gently rocking caged birds and bunnies to sell as pets. Families are selling cabbages out of their vans, the vegetables packed floor to ceiling.  The guest house is situated on a street that embraces the Old Beijing, while the New Beijing blares outside just a few meters away.

Then we turn onto another corner at the opposite end of the hutong. Now we are running parallel to the street with fake furs and meat stick snacks. This street is busy in its own kind of way despite missing the sounds of the pop music wafting from clothing stores and hawkers announcing the day's sales. Its pedestrians appear less ambitious to get to wherever they are going, but still they are mindful of Beijing's inescapable urgency to keep moving.

If you walk a little further along this particular street, you will stumble upon a food market, much like the way we did that day. Perhaps this is where most people on this particular street were headed, too. And then there you are amidst the eggs, spices, freshly made tofu, fruits and vegetables. Vendors are crammed into stalls five feet by five feet. Many stand atop their mountains of produce, throwing out samples, peeling back ripened citrus, engaging customers with techniques for the best ways to stir fry and steam.

We spend hours walking from aisle to aisle, wishing we could take home bundles of bright vegetables without condemning them to waste after a week's time. When we return to this market - The Market of all Markets - we will be better prepared and better equipped. We will have recipes in mind, and bags in hand, just like so many Beijingers do every day to prepare everyday culinary delights. There is lots that I miss from home in the States, but this sure beats cutting coupons, fluorescent lights and triple-washed-hand-selected bags 'o salad for Monday night dinner.