Eating Fresh or Aquarium Eating

As an American I like my food to look like food. That means I don’t want to see tails, eyes, fins, heads, necks, ears, feet, skin or anything else that might make me realize that I am not eating food, but dead animal. The Chinese on the other hand, like their food to be fresh. Not freshly flown in from somewhere. I’m talking freshly-head-chopped-off-two-seconds-before-cooking FRESH. This means that they like to eat out of aquariums. I personally, have some unresolved childhood issues concerning aquariums. After a mop hit the kitchen table and made my first pet (and only goldfish, Daisy) flop on to the floor and suffocate one morning, I have never trusted aquariums since the tender age of 5. And I have had an overwhelming empathy (and strange fascination) for the fish and other sea creatures that are forced to live in these precarious glass boxes. They should be safe in there, but as Daisy demonstrated, aquarium life is fragile. There are many things that could go wrong, but least of which should be the chance to be eaten by a human.  

So you can understand that I find it wildly uncomfortable to see fish tanks outside of restaurants all over Hong Kong filled with sea creatures that are swimming along minding their own business, unaware of the horrible fate that awaits them when someone comes and taps on the glass.   

Now I am aware of the fact that lobsters also await this fate in the US, but as with all things cultural, I grew up with that phenomenon so it doesn’t bother me. But what I have seen in Hong Kong goes far beyond the occasional tank of 10 lobsters in a fancy seafood restaurant. These tanks are everywhere here, including the grocery store. Just like in the US there is a seafood section in large grocery stores. While ours is filled only with fish on ice, theirs is also filled with tanks of live fish and other small slimy things that come with or without shells. Don't think shells are protecting these animals. Most recently I saw a few little turtles swimming around in tank outside of a restaurant. All I could think when I saw them was “run little turtles… RUN!!”