The Land of 10,000 Leather Belts

In China, there is a market for everything. There is the ceramic market, the fabric market, the frozen meat market, the traditional medicine market, the Middle Eastern market, the jade market, the pearl market, the hotel market, and on and on. It's our goal to hit up as many different markets in our two years as we can. So far, we have been to the traditional medicine market, the frozen meat market, and many local wet markets. Continuing on our adventures in market-land, yesterday we checked out the Sanyuanli leather market. 

I had read about it online as being not only the area of town where you can buy anything you want made of leather, but also home to great street food. I have mentioned street food a lot on this blog and so far we have yet to really find much of it, so we were hoping this wouldn't be another disappointing quest. As the five of us (PM and myself and some friends from work) set out on our adventure, we all had dreams of meat on a stick, steam buns, and the many other delicious treats we knew exist somewhere in China. 

Exiting the metro station, we were immediately greeted with the sights, smells, and sounds of the China of our dreams. There were men frying up dough, women roasting corn, and families with meat on a stick. Mixed in with the food were people selling knock-off shoes, purses, and clothes. Several women were bent over machines making every color button you can imagine. Dotted throughout the street were Muslim families slaughtering ram on the street, turning it into a butcher shop with the freshest meat I have seen yet. There was a sad looking ram tied up to a fence and we wondered just how long it would be until his day turned from bad to worse.

We spent hours wandering and eating. We walked into a leather building where you can purchase any color, any thickness, and any amount of leather you could ever want. There were stores that only sold zippers, and others only selling buttons and clasps. We entered one huge building that was three floors of shop after shop selling only leather belts and belt buckles. Alligator is clearly in this season as it was difficult to find anything else. We debated whether it was real or not, leaning more towards it being fake alligator, until we came across a tiny glass cage with two live specimens. They did not look happy. We walked a bit further and entered another building- more belts and belt buckles. It was a bit overwhelming.

Between the five of us, we ate: deep fried meat stuffed pancakes, egg custard tarts, fried rice steam buns, meat on a stick, apple vinegar drink, red bean and mung bean cookies, spicy lotus fruit, fried soybeans, pigs ear, and my favorite, red bean sesame balls. It was all delicious.

When we walked back towards the metro five hours later, we saw that the poor ram from earlier didn't have as successful a day as we did...