{"id":35958,"title":"A trip to the meat market in China's Songpan Ancient Town","author":"Sword_boat","permalink":"https://www.reddit.com/r/analog/comments/1ok303j/a_trip_to_the_meat_market_in_chinas_songpan/","description":"Just posted this on the Travel China subreddit and thought some people here might be interested. \n\nBrief intro to the town: \n\nSongpan Ancient Town is just over 200 miles from Chengdu in Sichuan province (south west china), and considered the 'west portal of Sichuan'.\n\nFour ethnic groups live in the town, including Tibetan, Qiang, Hui and Han. This contributes to its own type of culture called Kangba culture, which is a melding of the 4 different cultural elements. There is a strong muslim presence, particularly on 'Muslim street', where the local meat market is located, as well as a Buddhist temple with Arabic writing inside.\n\nVisiting the meat market was definitely a bit of a culture shock for me. The towers of bones, cow heads and various other fleshy bits neatly piled up or hanging off hooks was an interesting sight. But, if you eat meat, then ultimately I think it's important that you recognise where it comes from and what it looks like when an animal is slaughtered. In reality, it's no less pleasant than the meat we buy neatly packaged on the supermarket shelf.\n\nThe men inside the meat market were a bit surprised to see me, but were friendly enough, and even cut off a few pieces of raw meat straight from the carcass for me to try (I politely declined).\n\nThe town was by far one of the most culturally interesting parts of my trip to China. Alongside the meat market, I encountered wild cannabis growing on a hilltop, market stalls selling vast quantities of dried mushrooms (morells etc.) that would be very expensive back home, amazing local fruit, and much more. \n\nHad a bit of a film nightmare unfortunately and lots of my photos were ruined. These were more or less the only ones that made it out. All taken on Olympus XA. ","score":1028,"nsfw":true,"grayscale":false,"timestamp":1761838626,"sprocket":false,"camera_make":"olympus","camera_model":"xa","images":[{"resolution":"low","url":"https://d3i73ktnzbi69i.cloudfront.net/4aff5766-4254-42b7-a5e3-78808284a120.jpeg","width":720,"height":482},{"resolution":"medium","url":"https://d3i73ktnzbi69i.cloudfront.net/db3d7e00-12ce-4e15-a588-b6d03cb857db.jpeg","width":1080,"height":722},{"resolution":"high","url":"https://d3i73ktnzbi69i.cloudfront.net/66c88bd5-9887-4251-b97f-a38a3e612ddb.jpeg","width":1440,"height":963},{"resolution":"raw","url":"https://d3i73ktnzbi69i.cloudfront.net/5161e9cc-a303-47d3-94d7-f0c4a9d78f4e.jpeg","width":2048,"height":1370}],"colors":[{"hex":"#120f0a","css":"black","html":"black","percent":0.38412256},{"hex":"#7b7c90","css":"slategrey","html":"gray","percent":0.23259176},{"hex":"#f0eeef","css":"whitesmoke","html":"white","percent":0.16633432},{"hex":"#403b35","css":"darkslategray","html":"gray","percent":0.14168449},{"hex":"#d39072","css":"darksalmon","html":"brown","percent":0.07526688}],"keywords":[{"word":"trip","weight":0.14285714},{"word":"meat","weight":0.14285714},{"word":"market","weight":0.14285714},{"word":"china","weight":0.14285714},{"word":"songpan","weight":0.14285714},{"word":"ancient","weight":0.14285714},{"word":"town","weight":0.14285714}]}