To walk through the Canton road street market is to plunge yourself into a mass of activity. On the corner of the main road, where a section of the market begins, there is a seafood shop on one side. Large polystyrene boxes stand on the floor, filled up with ice and then with the silvery bodies of fish and the dulled white fillets lying on top of them. Above these are many clear plastic containers that are full of water that flows bubbling between them, in which there are lots of different sea creatures floating together – the alien forms of crayfish and other pale-coloured shrimp, and then baskets with lots of shells in them.
On the opposite corner there is a meat stall with an entire rack covered in pieces of hanging meat, the fleshy cuts glowing almost a bright pink colour beneath the stall’s bright lights that blaze down onto the meat. The pieces are lined up side by side, hanging from this rack, forming a whole wall of flushed, reddish-pink meat. The shopkeeper stands in front of this display, a stocky guy wearing grubby white clothes. He reaches up to take down pieces of meat and flings them onto a big wooden chopping block, hacking at them with a cleaver, deftly, barely needing to look at what he is cutting. The meat cut into pieces, then grabbed into a plastic bag and handed to a customer, an elderly lady who stands hunched over watching him work.
The market stalls are lined up along the road ahead, the wide pavement separating them from other food shops in the buildings behind them. Each stall is a sort of large green metal cabinet – like a large cupboard that’s fixed in place, with a corrugated metal roof stretching forward on top, from which the lamps, with their distinctive wide red plastic lampshades like strange hats, hang down over the tables at the front. There is a stall every few meters along the street. The characterful owners standing, or perching on a stools, behind the tables filled with the things they are selling, often with more boxes stacked in the cabinet behind them.
Everybody makes their way along the narrow channel between these stalls, struggling to get through the crowds. I shuffle slowly along, having to wait until a space opens ahead of me and getting pushed by people around. There are people coming in both directions, stopping to buy things from different stalls, so that it is hard to walk without continuously dodging around people. There are old ladies, dressed in layers of silk and wool, bodies stooped over as they pull along shopping trolleys, and energetic Indonesia maids hustling through to get the day’s shopping done. Everybody pushes past each other, jostling to make their way along the street. There are a lot of older people, assertively elbowing their way through with habits long formed, and maids and housewives, many pulling along the same kinds of shopping bags on wheels that tangle into the legs of other people.
I make my way slowly along the street, looking at the stalls on either side of me. There are fruit stalls with tables where different brightly coloured fruits are neatly arranged in organized sections, each one a bright area of one colour – a tray bearing mangoes with their smooth yellow skin seeming to push out a buttery glow into the air around them, and next to them some fruits that are a deep, sultry purple. Further along the same table, there is an area of starfruits with their glossy surfaces catching the light. Another stall is selling only oranges, with a wide table where they are all piled up in front of the owner, pushing out a very vibrant, almost artificial, shade in the light of the many lamps that hang down above them. The stall is doing good business, with the owner, a small old lady, scrabbling about to serve several customers who clamour around her. Whenever she is not serving anybody, she shouts out in a resonant voice, advertising the oranges to the people around. Her cries mingle with the musical shouts of other stalls and the sound of traffic from the roads nearby.
Next to this is a stall selling lots of roots and things. There are dark brown lumpen items that look almost like potatoes but have a hard white inside of them, and long cylinders of dark green that almost resemble stalks of bamboo but must be something else. The owner of this stall is a thin and wrinkled old lady with a headscarf pulled over her greyed hair. She sits on a stool behind the different roots laid out in their boxes, watching the activity around her with sunken eyes. She looks tired, but with a toughness that keeps her going.
A little further along, after I have jostled my way through a particularly crowded part of the market, there is another fruit stall. This one has some huge yellow fruits shaped like giant lemons, stacked up in a sort of tower on the corner of the table, their dimpled skins a vibrant yellow colour. The stack of them makes a kind of sculpture. Behind this artwork, there is also an area of dragon fruits arranged in neat rows with their flashy pink skins and curling petal like parts. The whole stall, with these different coloured fruits, presents an impressively vivid picture. The lady behind this table is slightly plump with old-fashioned style permed black hair. She has a sturdiness about her, sitting and looking contentedly over the treasure she has for sale.
The stall opposite is also selling fruits, as well as some trays with sweet potatoes and gnarled pieces of ginger. The owner, a small but solid lady with short hair and flushed face, calls out loudly to try to attract customers and all around there are the calls of other stalls as well as the hubbub of the customers. The crowded, jostling sounds seem to reinforce the crowded visual scene, so that the whole atmosphere is energetic and full of life. These fruit stalls are interspersed with other kinds of stalls along the length of the market. There are a couple selling clothes. One has lots of silken blouses hanging on rails all around the stall’s owner, those flowery patterned blouses of the kind worn by old Chinese ladies. The owner sits in the middle of these clothes which hang down from the stall’s roof all around her. Another stall is just selling hairclips and small accessories, with these arranged on a counter and a rack above this.
Next door to this is a busy vegetable stall, with big trays stuffed full of gai laan, baak choi, and other green vegetables. People scrabble around it and the owner dances about trying to serve them all. She grabs big handfuls of the vegetables which she stuffs into bags and passes to them. Then nearby is another stall selling nuts, with bulging sacks on the ground at the front, filled with peanuts in their shells and a tray with huge, glossy chestnuts. This stall feels quite simple, with just these sacks and boxes of nuts. But next door is a really magnificent fruit stall, with all kinds of different fruits glowing vividly beneath the lights that make them look brilliantly bright. Almost all of the stalls, like this one, have the red lamps hanging down low over their produce.
Finally I come to the far end of this section of the street market, feeling like I have walked through a wonderfully atmospheric world where the overflowing stalls and energetic people are crowded all around and the air dances with different calls.