NewChinaHand: The Pork of Shame
Lady Gaga had her meat dress: amateur! This week: a meat apartment!
Happy New Year, y’all!
What’s your favourite bacon? Lean? Smoked? Bits?
As of today, my favourite is the kind you hang out the window of your apartment to cure in the midday sun and smog, as exemplified beautifully by these images from Wuhan, Hubei Province:
http://news.ifeng.com/society/2/detail_2014_01/20/33179135_0.shtml
Imagine that rich texture of car exhaust, a peppering of dust and silicates, the exciting possibility of bird excrement for the lucky few. Once you’ve been Wuhan bacon, you never go (lean) back.
One can only imagine the thought process of the guy that did this: hiding your butcher business from the wife? A novel advertising ploy? Misunderstanding ‘strip joint’ (‘bump and rind’?)? Finally getting an address on Pork Avenue?!?
I simply can’t think of rasher action.
This reminds me of a classic New York Times piece a few years ago where they unveiled China’s “Strategic Pork Reserve” – a 200,000-metric-ton stockpile ready to, er, save the nation’s bacon in times of shortage.
(BTW, I think everybody should have a strategic pork reserve. A trot to the shops now could really save your neck.)
But then I made the connection: maybe this is it! This IS the strategic pork reserve! What better place to hide it than in plain sight?!?
Ok, enough ribbing for one week. Seriously, we might roll our eyes at crazy China for putting up with this, but where I come from there was one house that perfectly compliments the one in Wuhan as it always had breakfast products kept raw on the walls, especially at Halloween.
Eggs.
(If anyone finds a ketchup or brown sauce flat, please let us know in the comments below. We’re aiming at ‘Full English’ Avenue. No fruit, pls.)
Big shout out to fantastic photographer Sean Creamer for doing the ground work on this. You can check out his visually stunning photo blog here: (I’d be disappointed if you didn’t…)
https://theguestroom.org/category/street-snap/
Selected sources:
http://news.ifeng.com/society/2/detail_2014_01/20/33179135_0.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/world/asia/16china.html?_r=0
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