How Convenient

I live in a newly constructed 17-storey building that’s part of a very modern apartment complex. There is a Wal-Mart within 1 kilometer of the main security gate. I’m embarrassed to disclose the luxuries I enjoy compared to the average Nanchang resident, but what I’m saying here has a point. The point is, I was a bit apprehensive when one my friends - who is coming down for a one-day visit this Friday - asked, “can we meet some farmers? and/or kill a chicken and eat it for dinner?... i feel like i should be able to kill a chicken if i eat it so much in everyday life. and if i can't, well, maybe i should cut back on KFC.” I wasn’t so much apprehensive about the idea of killing a chicken as I was about explaining to my friend that I don’t exactly live in a farming hamlet. But this morning I left my apartment at 11am on a mission: Find a person who is not only willing to sell me a live chicken, but teach me and my friends how to kill it, prepare it, and then send us home with the meat. I had class at 2pm, so I left a few hours for this task. I was no more than 150 meters from my complex when I spotted a kitchen worker on a smoke break outside his restaurant. I figured there would be no harm in asking him for some advice. Perhaps he had some leads. I prefaced my question with, “this might be a bit strange…” but there was nothing strange about it for him. Before wasting more than 3 breathes, I was staring into the pebble-like eyes of a chicken clucking around in a cage. “68 RMB!” he proclaimed. “You can also buy a rabbit for 25 RMB per half kilogram,” he said while pointing to a group of giant cartoon-like mammals that, to me, looked more like hares than rabbits. “We also have these rare birds that come from Poyang Lake. Those are a bit more expensive since you can’t even find them in the marketplace. Only we have them. 105 RMB a head.”

Mission accomplished! Raise the banner nice and high for all the world to see. But tell me, why is that within a couple hundred paces of my doorstep I can find someone who is willing to sell me an endangered animal and teach me how to kill it, but I can’t get a decent stick of deodorant anywhere?! How convenient…