Save the goat!

We're currently in Nanjing for a few days.

We left our homestay at 7.45am (there are a lot of early mornings to this tour). The intention was that we would climb Mount Taishan today; this is China's most celebrated peak. It's long regarded as the Sacred Mountain of the East by followers of Daoism and attracts millions of pilgrims. The weather was extremely misty and wet; there are some 6000 steep steps. Normally a cable car would also run but this was out of service today due to the weather. Being neither of the inclination to climb a mountain in the rain nor pilgrims making a pilgrimage, Matt, me and Gemma decided not to do it. The rest of the group went ahead, got soaked and couldn't see anything from the top anyway .

In the afternoon we had use of a courtesy room in Tai'an so we could all take a shower as it had been 3 days (3 DAYS) since we had access to one. Matt and I then wandered around Tai'an, seeing a few interesting things along the way. Now we have been in China for a while now and have been fortunate not to see anything too gruesome (in terms of animals) mainly because I won't go to any of the 'hardcore' markets. However, the butcher's shops in Tai'an are a little unsavoury. Basically they have a rack on the street, from which hangs a dead animal; on closer inspection of the one we passed, the animal's skin and head were in the background and its swollen stomach in a plastic bucket (along with several other stomachs). The butcher was carving up what was left; which wasn't much. Coming from the spinal cord you could see most of its innards, pretty grim really. This particular animal was goat and the reason we knew this is because tied up right next to the carcass was a live goat. If someone came along wanting some more goat this poor mite would have its throat slit and be carved up just like its friend. I felt so sorry for it, it couldn't sit down, had no food that I could see and kept looking up at the tree it was tied to as if trying to suss out some kind of escape. I did want to free the goat but realised I'd have nowhere to put it.

We went by a predominantly fruit and veg market and saw the live chickens, which I could cope with until a lady purchased one and it was grabbed by the feet, dangling upside down all the way to the chopping board. That really upset me too. Many of the restaurants have a cage of live chickens outside too. I guess it makes them pretty fresh . It just reconfirms my reasons for being a vegetarian. I think there are far worse things to be seen, and according to the tour leader, Susan, the further south you go the worse it gets in terms of the variety of things the people will eat.

Anyway, we headed back to the courtesy room to pack up our belongings. We had bought some provisions from the supermarket so, with my 'must-tidy' hat on I decided to re-arrange our previous plastic bag of provisions we had brought with us from Xi-an. As I emptied the contents of the bag and got nearer the bottom, I noticed something long wriggle around; I yelled and made Matt find out what it was. OMG! It was a scorpion!! About 2-3 inches long it was disgusting. Matt put his shoe through the dude, which may contradict my previous paragraph and my bunny hugger mentality but they are dangerous, that was no bunny and where the hell would we have put it??

We met the group in the hotel lobby and did a bit of scaremongering before setting off for the train station. We got off the train at 1am in Nanjing and went straight to the hotel and to bed.