With a couple of hours to kill before our flight, the concierge recommended we go up to Johnston Road, to check out the outlet shops on the boulevard and delve into the market on the narrow streets behind.

What amazed us at first was the bamboo scaffolding. This time going up DOZENS of stories. Would you place your life in its hands?

And the decrepit buildings. From afar, they look pristine. Up close, they resemble bombed-out Beirut. Each with laundry hanging out the windows.

You could find Polo knock-offs, and Croc imitations too. Plenty of brand names deep in the confines of the market behind the main street. Along with those stores that sell Chinese medicine. Herbs and items that look like dried oysters and smell even worse. These stores are not for Anglos, and they’re EVERYWHERE!

Then, just when we thought we’d seen it all, we saw the chickens. LIVE chickens. Cages and cages of them. Ready to be taken home, slaughtered and eaten. We read about this stuff in the western world, see it in movies, but we can’t fathom it up close and personal, I couldn’t stop staring.

But on our way back to the main drag, desperately in need of a/c, we went agape. They were selling fish. LIVE fish. A well-dressed matron pointed out this red fish that looked like it had SARS, or was an albino, it was so pinkly pale, and then a woman in rubber boots scooped her hand into the styrofoam container, retrieved the struggling fish and handed it to her compatriot, who put it on a scale, placed the fish in a giant baggie, and handed it to the customer…STILL FLOPPING AROUND!

How do you get it home? Do you have an aquarium in the trunk? A cooler in the back seat? How the hell do you kill it?

And then there were the chicken/duck stores. With pig hoofs too. Giant pig carcasses. Men cleaving off bits for customers. Putting raw chickens in styrofoam for the way home.

Then another fish market. Where I was mesmerized by the selling of giant pieces of what looked like tuna, but could be buffalo meat for all I know, and Felice couldn’t stop staring into this bucket top. Where she pointed out to me chopped up eels were SQUIRMING! Squirting blood, shimmying from side to side. Their faces looking pissed, as the tubes of their bodies inflated and contracted. I didn’t want to get too close. I figured the damn things would jump up and bite me. Or taint my guilt with blood.

But having thought we’d seen it all, a few paces down, a stall was selling shrimp. LIVE shrimp. These giant gray prawns were all poured into a shallow round container, and were JUMPING FOR THEIR LIVES! Six inches in the air! While we watched, a couple even made their escape, to the sidewalk!

Down by the seaside, it’s all modern skyscrapers. But behind the giant steel and glass edifices, there’s an underbelly, our conception of the east…but even more vivid. It’s riveting. To view this way station between the twenty first century and the nineteenth.