Where the island is quiet and serene with banyan trees and beautiful gardens, the market is vibrant and active with stall upon stall of vendors selling various spices, herbs, teas, mushrooms, roots, dried flowers, dried seahorses, dried lizards, scorpions, and many other things I could not even categorize.
As we passed by each stall we were greeted with smells of anise, jasmine, chrysanthemum, and other smells we could not identify. The whole market was a sensory overload with the smells, the sights, and the sounds of the vendors hawking their products.
Adjacent to the herb market is a pet market. Imagine a cross between an open air market and a petsmart and you have a pretty good idea of what this market was like. Vendors sold pet supplies such as feeds, leases, aquarium equipment and cages and also pets.
Close to the herb and pet markets is an pedestrian mall. We were there at 4:30 PM on a Tuesday and the place was packed. The pedestrian mall was a more cosmopolitan version of the streets in Nanchang with it's hustle and bustle and folks of all ages milling about and passing through the crowds.
As pretty and relaxed as Shamian Island is, I prefer the lively crowds of the Chinese streets. It seems to be a more accurate representation of the China I have grown to love.
Tomorrow we board our flight from Guangzhou to Beijing and then board another flight that will take us back across the Arctic Ocean to Chicago and then on to Cincinnati to home. I can't believe it has only been a little over two weeks. Part of me will miss all of the places and things I have seen on a daily basis, and another part of me longs to get home.
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