Fresh Food?

I am a vegetarian and have been for nearly 10 years. My husband is what we call a "part-time" vegetarian, this means that he eats meat when we are not cooking together. He changed his mind about being "part-time" in China. We are now both full-time vegetarians and despite choosing to be vegetarian purely because the taste of meat was something I suddenly found repulsive, my reasons for being vegetarian are changing a little.

In China you want your food as fresh as possible as hygiene is a little different over here. In the courtyard below our apartment there is a large spiral structure of paving and bricks. Today I noticed 3 plastics trays leaning on a higher level against the side of the spiral. On closer inspection it turned out that someone had left 3 trays of shrimps drying uncovered in the sun. Needless to say flies were swarming on and around the shrimp which were probably going to be used in the small restaurant in our complex.

Meat and fish, if already dead and filleted is often uncovered and unrefrigerated unless at a really good supermarket. If you want to buy meat and fish as the locals do you need to go to a wet market or a very local supermarket. We accidentally ended up in one of these supermarkets on our first day. In Western society, unless you are a farming or butchering family, we are very removed from the process of slaughter and preparation of meat for consumption. In China it is quite different. You will see Supermarkets with rows of cages containing Chickens, alive, and tanks with minimal amounts of water containing fish, toads, eels, crabs and even turtles. The first time I saw this I was horrified. The conditions were appalling, but really were these conditions any worse than battery hens are kept in in the West? The fish were kept in such small amounts of water that they were jumping and some had died. 

When walking into the less touristy area of Shantang Jie where the locals shop we saw Ducks, Geese and Chickens tied to tables and people were selecting animals, having them weighed and then wringing their neck right there in the street. Even in our compound in the more modern area of Suzhou we have a shop that regularly gets Chickens in for slaughter. The worst part is that the person who does this job does not do it in a humane manner at all, causing huge amounts of distress to the animal. 

Would people in England think differently about picking up a Chicken from the supermarket if they had to select which feathery creature was going to grace their table? Is it wrong to eat a turtle if it is not endangered? Is it wrong to eat any animal if it is not endangered? Is the meat in the West that is kept frozen for such a long time safe or should the West start slaughtering animals to order as they do here in China? Is a Toad really a good choice of meat for your dinner?

Being vegetarian in China isn't easy. We manage to eat, but maybe we would find it easier if didn't see other people preparing their meals. When going to restaurants in and around Suzhou the staff often looks at us like we are crazy when we try to say in Mandarin that we are vegetarian. There are a couple of reasons for this that we have surmised; in some cases they just don't understand what we are saying, they can't understand why a "Lao wai" can't afford to eat meat or they do understand but think we are speaking our language and not theirs. As a last resort we have a card with Mandarin characters that say no meat and no meat juices. Our diet isn't always perfect, but we're working on it.