Cool Dog and Other Shops

I wanted to go on an adventure today so I Google mapped the city to try to find a pet store. One showed up across town called “KuGou” which means “Cool Dog” in Chinese. I figured we’d just go there, and maybe walk around the surrounding area a little bit and then go home. On the way there it looked like Sunday is the official “sell things on the sidewalk” day. But who knows, it might happen Saturday or all week too. This is a part of town we’ve never been to. I’d love to buy some sidewalk stuff, but I don’t know the bargaining jargon yet.

So we arrive at our destination and it’s a sad little pet shop. They had a strange assortment of dogs for sale: a scottie wearing a sweater, a couple of poodles, and a fully grown husky mix. They also had two very sick-looking kittens. We bought a bone for Smudgie out of pity and then left. As we walked, we saw several more pet shops that looked just like it but selling different dogs. We saw a white pomeranian, but it wasn’t as cute as Smudgie. There were chickens EVERYWHERE on the street. If they belonged to anyone, I don’t know how they can just leave them out on the street without having to corral them, but somehow the chickens know to stay put. I’m surprised I didn’t see any chicken road kill. Here are a couple pictures:

Then we stumbled upon this awesome market and decided to go inside. It went on forever, just streets and streets full of shops, many of them selling the same stuff. Clothes, candy, tea, random office supplies, and food were some of the things I can remember. Here are some pictures:

The entrance to the market

At this place you can have a blanket made on the spot

Laughing mannequin - who designed this???

Meat

In this maze, we decided to buy some type of flat bread with lots of sesame seeds on it as our mystery food item. We figured it still counts as “street food” but it’s probably not going to give us diarrhea (and it didn’t!). It was really good. I’m glad we went on this excursion. For the past three weeks, we’ve been limiting ourselves to work, home, and the Carrefour and surrounding shops. It’s good to remind ourselves that Huainan is a very big city and there are still plenty of surprises waiting for us.

Here’s a picture of Smudgie almost done with the bone we bought him: