People often ask me why I love living in Asia. Sometimes the answer is as simple – and complex – as this photo. I stumbled across this shop at a wholesale market yesterday in Singapore’s Pasir Panjang neighborhood, thought it’s much more typical of something you’d find in Hong Kong. It was exciting to see it here, where so much of the old has been “cleaned up” and replaced with newer, more sterile environments.
I could spend hours browsing in these intriguing shops, which often feature a combination of seafood, dried meats, fungus, sauces, medicinal products and other items – many completely unidentifiable – and thus all the more interesting. You usually notice the smell well before you arrive with its mix of pungent odors, which are a blend of bitter, sour and sweet.
This particular shop featured piles of small-sized eels, often served as cold appetizers in Chinese restaurants. They are deep-fried, heavily salted, and crunchy to taste. If you didn’t notice the small eyes, you’d think you were eating a tiny, fried noodle of some sort.
In the back of the shop, you can see a traditional green and white calendar, which in Chinese lists everything you need to know about this day. I also noticed bags of a sliced bitter almond, which when boiled with something sweet, such as pear, are consumed when you have a particularly bad cough.
In the upper right-hand corner of the photo, a red bucket near the ceiling acts as a cash register. The bucket hangs on a rope, which crosses a beam and then descends to the floor by way of a weight tied to the end. When the proprietor needs to deposit bills or make change, he picks up the weight, which releaes the pail filled with an assortment of coins and crumpled up, colorful Singaporean bills. After depositing my two-dollar note and making the requisite change, he let go the weight and the bucket returned to its safe perch.
This shop for me is like a microcosm of Asia – full of culture, legends, and history. Never dull and always something to learn.
For other travel photos, visit Delicious Baby.