You really have a sense of where the food comes from that ends up on your plate here.
Aside from the markets (that I'm yet to take Alex through) there are the aquariums in the restaurants and supermarkets that Alex still thinks are for entertainment (well, perhaps they are too) so I am not in a hurry to disabuse her of her thinking.
This evening, on a usually uneventful trip to get dinner just down the street, a lady had just slit the throat of a chicken and was bleeding it into a small bucket in the gutter out the front of a shop we passed. Alex craned her neck trying to see what was happening, "Momma, what's that chicken doing?" "I'm not sure Alex - look, there's the restaurant. What do you want to choose tonight?"
Then, we had to walk back * gulp* and I wasn't sure the best appoach. What state would we find the chicken in...
As we walked past, there was now a large bucket in the gutter and the chicken was being plucked (actually it had been half plucked already) into it so all you saw was the yellow skin and the feathered legs and back. Alex again checked it out (as I tried to steer her past as fast as possible) and asked "What are they doing?" I'm not sure whether she realised it was the chicken and what was happening but after everything else I was in no mood to discuss life and death with a 3 and a half year old. The rest of our trip was pretty uneventful.
**Now those of you who knew me as a child will remember that it was my job to feed our chickens in Armidale, and that I had one or two favourites whom eventually were taken by the fox. But you might also remember when we had roosters...and killed them for the table...and my recollection is that I refused to eat it having fed them and then seen the headless birds running around earlier.**
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Xiamen University, China
Our home away from Australia
3 comments:
I think you actually used to stroke the chooks as they hung on the fence too Lys! I could be wrong but I think that was the case.......
Oy, I feel for you babe. I can't imagine having to explain that to your 3 yr old. When I was in China, oh, about 18 yrs ago, we stayed in a hostel above a meat shop - we woke up to the ducks "screaming" for their lives before they were slaughtered. I had quacking dreams for weeks after that! (now at least the quacks have been silenced.) hee hee
That's so funny! Well, not really, but you know what I mean.
My mom raised chickens for a short time when I was younger. I remember quite a bit of it. The craziest part was when the head is chopped off, and if you let go, the chicken will flop about. The first time we did this, we were so shocked we let it flop into a soybean field. We eventually went in after it...
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