A Vist to the Butcher

One of my favorite open-market activities is to visit the butcher. The butcher's shop is an open 8 feet by 8 feet booth. When you go to the butcher, here is what you'll see:

- A long rack with meat hooks, on which are hanging 6-10 skinned cows and sheep - we're talking, whole animals, minus the head, the innards, and the hooves.
- The meat grinder and the scale at the back of the booth.
- At the front, a little counter with different parts of a sheep already cut and laid out.
- In the middle of the booth, a little coal furnace heater for warming your hands (it's winter, it's outside, and it's cold)
- Two stools.
- The chopping block. The chopping block is a tree stump - about the size of one of the small round tables at Starbucks. This chopping stump is never washed (that I can tell), and is just red and white from all of the bits of meat (and fat) chopped on it all day (week, month, year) long.

Whenever I visit the butcher now, he invites me to come sit in the booth with him just to hang out. Our family and their family have become friends. I could sit in that booth for hours.

But I should warn you, sitting in the booth... may not be for the faint of heart.

Today, when I went by, one of the stools had a huge cow hind leg bone on it. Hardly any meat on it, used for making soups... but huge like a bowling pin huge. The butcher said, "Come on in and sit awhile!" He tossed the bone off to the side, took that stool (phew), and gave me the other one. We sit and we talk.

I love going there because he's very friendly and does most of the talking, which is great listening practice for me. And, I love watching him interact with his customers. A lot of customers usually bicker with him, saying this or that piece of meat is too fatty or has something wrong with it - they say that to try to get a lower price. But he knows that he sells good meat, and he knows that they'll buy it. So he'll argue with them. In the end though, it's all just playful banter, a pretty typical shopkeeper-customer interaction.

Oh yes, and as you sit in the booth, you get to watch him chop the meat - bones and all - on the chopping stump, with his giant chopping knife (seriously, the blade is about the size of a box of See's Candies Nuts & Chews). Little bits of meat and bone go flying everywhere - yes, sometimes even onto my clothes. Today, I watched him chop the bowling pin beef bone into four pieces. It was sold for 16 kuai, to be used in a soup.

A few weeks ago, I recorded some of the butcher's interactions with two older women who had come to buy some leg of lamb. You can get a taste of what the butcher shop is like by listening to this one-and-a-half minute clip. Oh, you'll also notice that there is quite an accent, both from him and the women.



At first, you'll hear one of the women tell him not to bother taking the lamb leg off the hook... it's got too much fat. "Too much fat? No...", he says, while taking leg down and getting ready to chop it for her. Then the lady says something about lamb tail. They continue to bicker about the lamb leg. He says, "Fine fine, I'm going to chop up the leg for you and get it all ready. You go walk around the market... if you find a better leg, buy it. If not, you come back and take this one." See, he knows they'll buy his meat.

Then you hear him chopping. Imagine bits of bone and flesh flying into the air.

At the end of the clip, he tells them it's 97 kuai. Then the two women start bickering with each other, each wanting to pay for it. He tells them not to grab, not to grab... he'll take their money either way. And at the end, I think you hear the women saying the meat (and the price) is ok after all.