Qing Ping Market Pictures

More pictures from Sunday at Qingping Market. This was so far one of my favorite markets I've been to in China. The variety of things I saw here rivals some of the great markets I've seen elsewhere in China in my travels. These men & women were selling some of the more exotic type products that go into chinese medicine. There were things that appeared to be tiger paws/legs, antlers, horns from a variety of animals, various bones, etc. These sellers would pull out a hack saw or a huge knife to cut off a piece of the "item" for sale for the buyer. People were not buying "a tiger paw". They were buying a chunk of a tiger paw, tendon still attached. Gross looking I know, but so curious that one has to stay and watch!!! Several of the people seemed to be from regions outside of Guangzhou, I'm not sure but I would guess they probably traveled quite a distance to come & sell these things here.
This store was selling scorpions. In the big red bin they are picking up scorpions with chopsticks & putting them into the small blue bin. I haven't a clue what they use the scorpions for, but I would guess food for some other sort of animal- snake maybe??Women selling oranges outside one of the indoor sections of the market.
From the indoor market- there were just hundreds of differnent things in all of the bags-I think all for the purpose of chinese medicine- this one was seahorses.
And one of my favorites- snakes. No, I do not love snakes- but this was so creatively displayed, what's not to love? Every single snake in every bag I saw (and there were a LOT!) was perfectly coiled in exactly the same way. It was really quite amazing to see.
After wandering through an indoor part of the market, I hit some side streets to see what else was around. I found these women & one guy playing Mahjong. They were some serious mahjong players & it was fun to watch them. I'm sure they couldn't imagine why I was interested.Most all of the Mahjong you see on the street uses these two color tiles- green backs & white fronts. In every province in China I've been to I've always seen these specific tiles. Occasionally you will see one group playing with a slightly different set, but this seems to be the generic set that everyone has. Cindy, Heidi, Sharon- what do you think? Is that us in 50 years? I did notice there was little to no talking (although the guy frequently broke out in song), so we may never quite get as good as these women!