more temple fair, here some enterprising vendors have setup a pants sale on the way to the southern Chinese art section. They are selling everything here. There was one stall dedicated to spatulas, reminded me of spatula city from UHF. The art section did not turn out so well in the pics. i have been getting feedback that some of the blurry pics are hard to see and understand what is going on, that combined with the length of time it takes to upload has made me be a little more selective about what i post. Don't worry if you really like the fuzzy ones i am saving them and can show you blurry pic after blurry pic when i get back. The art was cool though, very bright with variations on the animals of the zodiac and the two characters you see everywhere for new years, good fortune (fu).


here is the most striking difference i saw. Food, i usually consider myself a pretty open eater but this was hard for me. In this picture you can see different (big) fried silkworms. i tried a smaller silkworm and was not terribly impressed. It was just like an M & M, hard on the outside and soft on the inside. Tasted pretty earthy and kind of like you would expect a bug to taste. The animal on the bottom is crabs.

the guy to the left is singing to the crowd back at the altar. i assumed he was same semi-famous singer that had been hired for the fair. Nope this is just karaoke writ large. karaoke is serious as death here, none of this "but the point is to sound bad". After this guy was done two women came up and sang a duet. All of them brought down the house. Going out with your co-workers to sing is very popular and kind of similar to golf here in that a lot of your backroom deals are done at karaoke and it is a good way to get in with the boss man. Turns out the director i am working with / for here is the best singer in the atc. Who knew? Lucky for me i am kick ass at karaoke, if anyone doubts me please direct all inquires to divya and yachi.

more food and this stuff is even crazier for my western tastes. The upper left is two different types of scorpions, the upper right is millipedes and crickets the size of a finger. It was funny listening to hua trying to explain this to me. He said "what do you call the things with many legs?" as he is pointing at the stall. This is before i saw what they were offering so millipede did not even cross my mind as a possibility for what he could be talking about. Seeing it though i was like "hmm, millipede is the word you are looking for and what i just cannot bring myself to eat yet". Oh yeah before i forget the bottom right is chicken hearts and sparrows. Chicken hearts i like and ended up eating. So good especially right off the grill. Sparrows i don't think i will eat cause they are basically embryo sparrows and i am not sure how crunchy their bones would be, nor do i particularly want to find out. This is pretty popular food though. Later in the week we saw some stalls in the chi-chi shopping district and the were offering the same sort of food there.

this was the crowd that was watching karaoke. Bigger than the crowd that was praying at the altar. Like i said real deal serious. i just got to find a place that offers baby got back and i got it made.