Tailor and Meat Seller?
The tailor found a secondary use for her clothes hangers: meat. Let me know if you can identify the animal(s) and I’ll buy you a carcass while getting my clothes stitched.
Raw Meat in a Cart
I saw this abandoned cart of fresh raw meat while taking back roads to the Old Town. My recently gained trust in street food rapidly waned.
Australian Girls
My appetite remained, though, and I was glad to see these two nice Australian girls seated on a bench outside one of the many small crowded food stalls I had been eying, not knowing which ones were safe. I figured that if these girls could eat the food, I could too, though I was only a few blocks away from the raw meat cart. The girls ordered another bowl of a delicious coriander noodle soup for me. I was glad for some foreign English-speaking company and the girls explained that they had been in Shanghai for a few weeks as part of an exchange program. As a result, they spoke a little Chinese and had seen much of the city.
Tripe?
Well into the conversation, one of them asked if we had tried the meat yet. I fished around the bottom of the bowl and realized that there were very unidentifiable meat slices lurking at the bottom of what I had thought was vegetarian noodle soup. All I can say is that I tried no more than 3 pieces. It was chewy, a little tasty, and totally unfamiliar in both texture and taste.
Soup
Above is the large container of soup from which all the customers are served. After I took these pictures, a man standing in front of the shop communicated with me in sign language, circling his stomach and pointing to the soup. I can only guess that I ate some animal’s stomach lining, or tripe.
Yes, I’m sure it’s tripe. I ate it often in China on the street. It’s actually quite tasty.