Local Cuisine

Our last day in Hefei: One last trip to the Lotus Mart. Cynthia stayed at the room because, well, there are sections of the Lotus Mart that she does not want to visit. Van, Grace and I took some time to browse. The bottom floor has the normal department store stuff and more. Clothing, jewelry, CD's, VCD's, etc... also they have a huge play area for kids, very similar to Kid's Place on Tiverton Way. The second floor is food, clothes, and department store stuff. In the 'deli' section of the store is where it gets exciting. From what I'm told a lot of people still eat very traditional fare including turtle, frog, and eel. Now in this section they have these items packaged and live. There are tanks where you can pick out your particular fish, eel, frog, and crab. There were display areas with hunks of meat piled on ice. I don't know what kind of meat was there but people were picking up hunks of it and placing it in bags. You just pick it up with your hands and put it in a bag. Chicken feet, complete with toe nails, dried eel, fish heads, sides of beef, all kinds of cooked and uncooked birds with heads still attached and other little assorted live things were all there. For those of you that know Cynthia, could you imagine her in the 'deli'. Sorry, I have no picture to post with this entry.