An Auspicious Year

Coming out of BART this morning, I noticed a very long line of people along the side of the now empty Federal building at the United Nations Plaza.  The first thing I noticed about the line, after first noticing it because of its length, I determined that everyone in the line was Asian, mostly Chinese and Vietnamese.  I asked one of the vendors selling vegetables what the line was for.  Live chickens, he told me, and then I noticed a truck with this load.

I've lived in San Francisco for 30 years.  I've worked next to this Farmers Market for most of those 30 years.  I have never seen people line up for live chickens in this great a number.  Periodically animal rights activists find out that the Chinese often buy their dinner while its still alive, be it a chicken or a fish, and totally freak out and demand the city close them down.  I guess they (the animal rights activists) are okay with animals being butchered at meat factories.  Buying chicken at Safeway is so clean and anticeptic.  I'm willing to bet that if everyone did have to kill their own chickens, we'd eat it a lot less often.  A friend tells me this story about an old Chinese woman attempting to get on a Muni bus with a live chicken, but was stopped by the driver who said, "You can't bring a live chicken on this bus."  So she stepped off the bus, wrung the chicken's neck, and got back on the bus saying, "It not live now.  It dead." 

Anyways, I digress.

There was also a smaller truck selling pheasants.  There is a gruesome procedure performed on the pheasants.  Before putting the live pheasant into a paper bag, the beak is cut off.  I guess pheasants fight back a little more than chickens. 

But like I was saying, in 30 years I've never seen people line up like that for live chickens.  I immediately went to a friend at work and asked about it.  He explained to me that the Chinese New Year begins January 26.  This will be the Year of the Ox, and the Chinese are hedging their bets by beginning this new year by slaying the fatted calf, only poultry is substituted for the calf. 

There was a cartoon in the S.F. Chronicle last week depicting a conflicted guy who was half Chinese, half Jewish.  He was confused having three new year's to celebrate.  Gung hay fat choy, y'all.

Comments

[brenda]

Gung hay fat choy! to you too!

[maggie]

Wow, how interesting! I would have chocked it off to the current economy! :D