This post is part of my China holiday series.

This is roughly what the market looks like in the morning. A weekday morning, and still packed.

Eggs

Bought the most expensive ones. Good eggs. You can buy them by weight.

Vegetables

So fresh you can tell at a glance.

Those colours. A work of art.

They check the kernels inside before you buy the corn.

Buy fresh corn back home and you’re stuck peeling it and dealing with the husks. Here they do it for you.

They peel the Chinese yam too. Apparently the sap makes your hands itch. I’d only ever eaten it. Had no idea.

Pre-cut vegetables. Bought a little, just enough for that day. Cheap too.

Lotus root. Ugly as it is, it’s delicious.

Meat

Geese and chickens.

The meat is usually butchered and sold on the same day, so they hang it at room temperature. Easy to see what’s on offer, that’s for sure. But leaving it out like this, so boldly? Here’s why, I think:

1. It’s incredibly fresh. I didn’t see flies on it once. In this heat, customers would know straight away if the meat were getting old.
2. People buy just enough to eat that day. Buying loads and putting it in the fridge or freezer doesn’t seem to be the thing here.
3. Apparently there’s a separate market for meat that doesn’t sell that day, where nearby restaurants and others buy it in bulk.

Maybe this is why the food in Yangjiang tastes so good. In hot places, people often salt or season food to keep it longer. Here, by the sea, with plenty of food coming in, people expect fresh ingredients all the time.

Look at those layers of fat and lean meat. That colour alone looks bloody good..

Ordered a little pork rib. The butcher chopped it up, bone and all, in no time.

This is ridiculous. Steam the ribs with fermented black beans, eat them with rice porridge, and the taste just about knocks you out. Had it three times while we were there.

Chicken

I didn’t know yolks could form inside a hen before the eggs do. Cooked up, they’re tasty too.

And this is what it becomes. One problem: since coming home, every time I eat chicken I think of this and get a bit sad. Like I said, the texture and the flavour of the meat are different.

Seafood

The fish is sold fresh too.

Prepared-food shop

Last stop, a shop selling ready-made dishes. Anything that’s hard to make at home, we buy here. Who said a meal at home has to be plain? We ate better than that.

And then, dinner at home

The rule before every meal: start with soup made that day. Cooked that day, finished that day.

Candied Chinese yam (拔丝山药) from the ready-made food shop. Basi? Loved it with my very childish sweet tooth.

Another slightly terrifying feast. My wife’s brother cooked for us. Seafood festival. First time trying mantis shrimp.

Other things

The loofah (a natural bath sponge to me) was huge. I wanted one. No idea why, but having one at home feels like it’d be reassuring.

What about at night?

Thought the market would quiet down at night. Nope. Street stalls come out and it’s packed all over again. Food straight from the wok. How could it not be good? I was jogging, so I only went past.

But even at night it’s really hot. The corgi agrees.

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All posts from this China trip

Next: Grocery shopping in Yangjiang (coming soon)