Orient Sojourns

"Yellow air..." I whispered to myself.

For the first time in my life I could see air; I couldn't see people at the other end of the open market. The air pollution and overcrowding could not lessen the excitement in me or the great feeling of the very exotic atmosphere of the fresh market in Chongqing, China.

Neat arrangements of endless varieties of common and exotic fruits and vegetables; it was a feast on its own to my eyes that were used to the limited variety usually imported into my dry Savannah country. Plump and fresh, I would have only fruits for the rest of the day.

"Oh this one is too skinny, just look at it!" A short and scruffy lady seemingly annoyed by the lean chicken threw it back into its display container. I tried to check myself back to reality by convincing myself that I did not just see her hold the uncovered chicken with both of her bare hands.

"Get the ones with most fat, we're having too many people over." A man said as he and his wife had their bare hands sunk in pork chop pieces.

I could not help but laugh in great shock as I realized everyone buying meat would first examine it with their bare hands, throwing most back and maybe taking a few pieces. What a practice! Would I have any meat after this in Chongqing? Well this was China, food was everywhere and too inviting. Just then I saw a small van offload buckets of fish at a restaurant just off the end of the market where I stood. With a BBQ stand full of burning coal I started to doubt my day's 'fruit fast' plan. Just then a man who seemed to be the owner and chef, from how he instructed everyone around, sunk his left arm in one of the buckets, took out a huge fish with a large knife in his right arm. I started to make the first few steps towards the small restaurant, just then he hit the fish on the pavement and for a second I thought he must have dropped it, until he now held it steadily down on the pavement in front of the restaurant where I and half the people at the market had walked. He meticulously grated off the scales without a care in the world.

With my hand over my mouth I realized I had to get used to things, and maybe be a little more careful. I looked around to laugh at myself in shock, it was a whole different world, and noticed almost everyone was staring at me.

"Ni hao!" I said with a smile to a wide- eyed mother and baby who had their mouths wide open in shock at me, at that their jaws further dropped. It was their first time to see a black person.