Donkeys, dogs, and baboons, oh my!

It figures that I'd leave my camera at home today since we saw more bizarre things in four hours than we've seen our entire time here.

It all started when we went to Jin Ding for lunch at Mr. Pizza. Jin Ding is a little village a few bus stops north of us. When we got off the bus and crossed the street, we saw a donkey tethered to a tree in front of a restaurant where there's usually chickens on leashes. I'm pretty used to seeing live chickens tied up to all sorts of things, but donkeys are rarer. It was cute -- dark grey with floppy ears and a black nose. Dwight and I remarked to each other that it didn't look very happy.

We continued on to Mr. Pizza and had a tasty meal. Afterwards, we walked back past the tree where the donkey had been tethered only to discover that during our meal, the donkey had been slaughtered and was being skinned and gutted on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. It looked bigger dead than alive, and three men were bent over the carcass scraping all the fur off.

This was such a startling sight that we almost overlooked the skinned and gutted dog carcass hanging from a meat hook at a little stand in front of the restaurant. The stand was being used by the restaurant's staff as a meat prep area. The dog still had fur on its head, so it was easy to see what its face would have looked like had it been alive. The meat hooked was jammed through the back of its neck, and its face was staring out toward the busy street. The restaurant worker was busy chopping up another dog carcass into bite-sized chunks.

This scene was enough to make us stop and stare (where we, of course, provided staring material for the locals). Just as we regained ourselves and started to walk away, a pick up truck pulled up to the curb with a delivery for the restaurant: another dog, still alive, in a cage. It was a white dog, medium sized, with dirty fur. Just an average dog around here. Short-haired. Pointy ears. Cute doggie face. A woman from the restaurant tried to pry it out of its cage, but it was resisting. It was scared, and kept trying to evade her grasp by curling itself up in a little ball. It seemed to know that it was going to end up stir-fried.

All of this made our lunch -- which included animal products -- sit heavy in our stomachs. But none of these sights (except us waiguoren) even elicited a second glance from the locals.

We went our next destination, a small store called the Zhuhai Deli that sells imported foods. We'd never been there before, but had heard about it on an expat website. There, we able to stock up on goodies like refried beans, olives, and bleu cheese -- all things that are unavailable in the rest of Zhuhai. We paid a pretty penny for this stuff, but familiar food is worth it.

Then, on the way home from the store, we saw something that even surprised the Chinese people on the bus with us: a man walking down the street with three baboons on leashes. He was just walking them like you'd walk your dog. I don't think that baboons are common around here, and it wasn't clear why he had them, but it was funny to hear all the Chinese passengers say "ohhhhhhhhh!" when they saw it.

Perhaps the baboons were off to the stew pot, too. Who knows. This is China, after all.