The tragic tale of Fishy the Fish

 
A gory true story involving blood, violence and seafood

AUTHENTICITY is the hot new thing in tourism. Instead of going to artificial tourist traps, you visit ACTUAL locations used by LIVE working inhabitants, and see, hear and especially smell authentic residents doing quaint real-life activities, such commuting, yawning, texting, falling into drunken stupors, vomiting into bins etc.

With this in mind, I was delighted when my friend Wendy Ng organized a visit to a real live fishing village manned by living, breathing fishermen.

I told my kids the exciting news.

“Will they have wi-fi there?” they replied.

“Of course not,” I said. “This is a primitive society where nothing has changed for hundreds of years. They’re probably still on WAP.”

The kids groaned.


     But their attitude soon changed. Messing about on the water is always really good fun.

 
     We bobbed past the Floating Restaurant on our way out into the open sea.

Then our boat, containing several families, docked at the fishing village in Lamma, and we were taken on a fascinating tour by aged, gnarled fishermen, their skin burned black by the sun, or possibly Australian Gold Speedy Bronzing Lotion.

The youngsters love d it, and ran around doing cute childish things such as nearly drowning, nearly feeding parts of their body to giant stingrays and so on.

One of the kids, with help from a chartered professional fisherman, caught a large sea-creature which she dubbed: “Fishy the Fish”. So imaginative! How do kids come up with these things?

The fisherman grabbed Fishy The Fish and, holding him upside down, beckoned us over to another part of the village. I was a bit dismayed at how roughly he treated our cute new finny companion.
*
The fact is, Asians are generally NOT kind to fish or other animals. Take zoos for example. In Western zoos, each animal has a sign on its cage saying where it comes from, what it likes to eat and so on.

But I can remember a sign on a cage in Shanghai Zoo, not long ago, which said:

1) Edible.

2) Fur Can Be Used.

3) Evil Animal.

(This is not a joke. That was what the sign said, and it wasn’t particularly unusual.)
*
Then there was the zoo in Shimoga, a town in southern India, which decided to solve its budget problems by loaning out tigers to residents in high crime areas for use as guard dogs.

The crime rate immediately fell, as did the criminal population, after a while.
*
Anyway, back to the scene at the fishing village: our charming, gnarled host flung Fishy the Fish to the ground and started hacking away at him with a large chopper. Blood spurted like fountains. Palpitating organs flew in all directions.

 

The adults were horrified. We covered our eyes and ran off, knocking ourselves out on lampposts.

The children stayed put and watched, their eyes open wider than they had ever been. “Look!” said my youngest child, pointing to a tiny lump of something that had ended up in the corner. “Fishy the Fish’s heart is over there—and it is STILL beating.”
*
At the end of the tour, the children were fine, but the adults were horribly queasy. I’ve decided I have a problem with reality. It’s just all a bit too authentic for me.
*

[ Going home ]
*
*
[Pictures by Wendy Ng}

Technorati Tags: Lamma,fishing,fishing village,Hong Kong.chopped up alive

Comments

[rafanjr]

I once asked a child what she ate for lunch. She mumbled something like Nemo or Happy Feet or something... I didn't like to figure out what it was... because it might be too authentic for me too.

[grandpa aka Faye Libad aka fardel]

This story is really funny
City dwellers are really extra sensitive in relation to food products ( at least the food which used to walk or fly or swim before being processed into a yummy meal )
Your story reminds me of a time when I was so hungry that I started to eat the fish before I had time to kill it..

sorry!
I was hungry
But it was good

[Paul]

Food is a nasty nasty business. It's even worse when they decide to add the non-food parts like cardboard or plastic as a supplement.

With that in mind...Happy mid-autumn festival folks [ 中秋節快樂 ! ]! Don't forget to eat your mooncakes. ;-)

[Mike M]

If I had a chance I would love to meet all of my meat. Gives you a better idea if you are eating something healthy.

Zoos in Asia are great for making connection with animals. You go to a zoo in America and the animal is behind 3 inches of scratched glass and is hiding out of sight in its large habitat with plastic trees. In Asia you tip handler and he says sure lets take a picture with the boa constrictor around your neck and the toucan on your shoulder. Later I will let you hold the baby crocodile with the plastic tie around its jaws. All very true.

[Lift Lurker]

Mike, so true. As saying goes: you are who you eat.

[Angela]

We had overseas guests, a German guy and his English wife. A group of us went to this popular outdoors Food Centre where they served all kinds of grilled animals. Among others, we ordered a large seabass, grilled and drenched in chili sauce. 

As we all grabbed our chopsticks in preparation to attack the meal, the English woman looked even paler than usual and queasy, said "I can't eat that fish, it's still looking at me!"

A cheeky fellow, this German, grabbed a tissue paper and neatly lay it accross the fish's head. "Now we can eat!" he announced. Still smiling, he declared, "this is like with a woman, in the worst case, you just cover her face with a towel."

[Chamin]

Two real stories from Sri Lankan zoos, where people had more authentic interactions with animals:

1. One privately owned zoo used to allow taking photos with the animals. It stopped and the zoo got closed after a bear killed a 10-year old boy. Until that happened, media was singing praise to the new zoo that has new ways :-p

2. A university student jumped in to the den of a lion, wanting to feed himself to the lion. He even took some of the clothes off to make it easy for the lion.

[marble]

If you think your heart is strong enough, check this out to see people consuming food while the fish / chick embryo and octopus are still alive. There are thousands of similar clips available on the Internet, meaning such coldblooded practices are quite common.

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=97wGb2Ln3U4

I think it is perfectly ok to eat animals as food so long as we kill or cook them in humane ways. Unnecessary cruelty used merely as promotional gimmicks should be condemned.

[Nury]

Fardel, did you really eat a live fish?! Eww, it sounds like a horrible thing to do. Didn't you feel terrible?!
Marble, I had a look at a few seconds of your video link -- it will give me nightmares tonight, I think.

[grandpa aka Faye Libad aka fardel]

No I did not eat it alive.
I killed it with my teeth, since it was trying to get away

It tasted like Sushi, just fresher (°_°)

[shrynne]

it is good to know where your food comes from but sometimes it does get a bit too real..having grown up in Hk, we went to my parents' village in India when I was 7(my first time).
My aunt's family were still living there at that time, it was great!No streetlights so ppl generally avoided going out after dark and if they had to with the help of torch lights or kerosene lamps..(mind you, this was around 20 yrs ago but really not that long, right, right??)
My aunt had a pet cow which she'd milk every day. I wanted to start a zoo..so tried my hand at getting a goat kid but since we were there for only the summer, it didnt work. So my aunt got me a chicken for my bday.
hey i was a city kid.. so when the chicken did its first poo, i took it to the loo to wash its bum to the amusement of all my family! anyways, long story short.. towards the end of our hols, my pet chicken(whose name i've now forgotten) disappeared... and later that afternoon, we had chicken curry...twas a sad day in the village.. no wait, it was only for me..:(

[marble]

Talking about westerners who dare not eat the food that "is still looking" at the diners on the plate, I wonder what would happen if they see the twinkling night bulbs that fit into the eyes on the head of a roasated suckling piglet, a must item on the menu of a Chinese wedding banquet.

[shrynne]

haha-- i can already picture the roasted pig with twinkling lights, kinda like walking along Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront during Christmas.
something similar to that would be how one of the highlights at a Polish wedding (which can go on for 2 days!) is a whole roasted pig with fire crackers stuck in them so ppl go 'oooh' and 'ahh'

[TS]

I would never eat anything that's still alive.
Vegetarians and their militant wing, the vegans, eat more live things than any one else.

[Christyn Rana]

I'm in my 3rd day experiencing some explosive actions about 5 times a day. I had really spicy seafood 3 nights ago and the following afternoon spicy brinjal for lunch and the result is that its wose than Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing out together. I don't think the old uncle and his gang at the chinatown alley could poison me. My enemies I dined with are still alive. The guy at the counter that afternoon wasn't nice. On the other hand, this is asia. Duh. What if I die! After I am done sipping some hot honey and lime and hammering away on the computer. I'm starting to hear the devil and his friends panicking.

[Mike M]

The furthur expression of meet the meat is a character from Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, Dish of the Day, Ameglian Major Cow, a ruminant specifically bred to not only have the desire to be eaten, but to be capable of saying so quite clearly and distinctly. The Major Cow's quite vocal and emphatic desire to be consumed by Milliways' patrons is the most revolting thing that Arthur Dent has ever heard, and the Dish is nonplussed by a queasy Arthur's subsequent order of a green salad, since it knows "many vegetables that are very clear" on the point of not wanting to be eaten — which was part of the reason for the creation of the Ameglian Major Cow in the first place. After Zaphod orders four rare steaks, the Dish announces that it is nipping off to the kitchen to shoot itself. Though it states, "I'll be very humane," this does not comfort Arthur at all.

[Christy]

When I was in primary school I had a friend who had a pet hen at home -- yes, she lived in the city...

And every time you called you would hear it sqawking away. Especially if the conversation lasted for more than 5 minutes.

And my Arabic teacher once told me about how they used to kill chicken back home in Egypt...they'd cut the head off and the poor thing would be running around, headless, with blood spurting out of the severed artery. Major ewwwww!

[Ram]

@TS,

"Vegetarians and their militant wing, the vegans, eat more live things than any one else."

What does that mean?... I don't get the point...

[Angela]

After reading TS's comment I feel like regurgitating the salad I ate last night...I can imagine the lettuce begging for mercy as my teeth chomped down on its innocent, quivering leaves.

I should have halal fried chicken for lunch today to make up for my violent crime at the dinner table.

*

I am off to water my plants now... I have to redeem myself.

[Nury]

Ram, he means that veggie foods (like salad and yogurt) are technically alive when you eat them.
But steak is dead.

TS is so sharp!

Question for a future column -- what height do you have to send something to make it stay up in orbit? anyone know?

[grandpa aka Faye Libad aka fardel]

High,, very high

Higher that Lift Lurker
even Higher than me

Higher than all of the gang standing up on each others' shoulders

22,000 miles

[grandpa aka Faye Libad aka fardel]

I like those comments:
a lot of ewwwww!
A lot of Eww,
horrified ?!?!
Queasy ?!?

Whow !

I am sure none of you would be able to resist a nice stuffed roasted turkey with small potatoes and chestnuts
I am sure that none of you eat sushi
As a matter of fact I believe that you live on Love and thin Air...
Just like me....

what a bunch of Hypocrits:(°_°)

[sej]

I recall having Lobster Sashimi once... whilst the animal was quite clearly dead, it was all chopped up, the meat was still fresh enough that it was quivering on the plate.

Nury,

It depends on how fast the object is travelling, and in what direction. The slower something is travelling, the further away it has to be put.

The reason something stays in orbit, is because it is travelling horizontally fast enough, that the fall of the object simply matches the curve of the Earth, and so it never gets any closer. As it slows however, the fall to Earth becomes quicker, and the orbit shrinks, until eventually, it falls back to Earth, so you have to take into account that even at insane distances, satellites, including the space station, are slowed down by drag caused by the atmosphere.

Cristy,

I recall when I was in school, we were going to do chicken dissections for Ag, only problem was, the chickens were still alive. So part of the lesson was to break the chickens neck, with much the same result, minus the blood loss... at least until we started cutting them up.

[TS]

The International Space Station orbits at an average 280 km above Earth's surface. Due to atmospheric drag it has to be lifted a bit higher a few times every year.
Spy satellites go lower than this, but can only stay there for short periods of time before they are slowed down by the drag and falls to earth. They will have some fuel to lift them up higher, but generally spy satellites are short lived.

2.000 km out you find the Global Positioning System satellites, constantly swinging around the earth.
These are used by your GPS devices to determine were on Earth you are.
Originally it was developed by the US for military use, but was later released for use by the general public by Ronald Reagan.
That's the official story anyway. In reality it was developed so that men would no longer have to be embarrassed by asking strangers for directions.

If you want something to stand still above the same spot on Earth, you need to put it 36.000 km away in the Geostationary Orbit, also known as the Clarke Orbit named after Arthur C. Clarke.
This is were the communication satellites for TV and telephones are.
Up there you don't have to worry about atmospheric drag, but you will still have to correct the orbit once in a while because the Earth it not a perfect sphere and the gravitational influence of the Moon.

If the Earth was a perfect sphere, had a uniform density and had no atmosphere, you would be able to put things in orbit a couple of centimeters above the surface.
you might get inspired to write a science fiction story about stuff in low orbit around an airless world.
Don't bother unless you can up with a new twist, there's already lots of those stories. In fact one of the better ones is called Maelstrom II written by Clarke.
A man ends up in an orbit that will take him very close to the Moon's surface in a space craft after after a malfunction of the launch system on the Moon. Initially it is though that he will be safe long enough for a rescue craft to match orbit and pick him up.
Then it is realised that his orbit will take him across a mountain range, lower than the ridge...

A short film of Maelstrom II have been in production for years now, there's a preview available on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIX4uU3VCDI

[grandpa aka Faye Libad aka fardel]

Whow
That's a lot of interesting iinformation there.
Where was the humor?

[Vaibhav]

Nury - The escape velocity needed would be 11 Km/sec. For how long i'm not sure. But upto about the level of geo stationary satellites.

[sej]

escape velocity is a bit of a mis-conception. If I recall correctly, 11Km/s relies on instantaneous velocity at the Earth's surface, and zero air-resistance. Also, the higher you go, the lower the escape velocity.

Consider further, rockets quite successfully break free of the earth, yet, they have a standing start. What enables them to break free, is acceleration.

Let's say the acceleration towards the Earth is the generally used approximation of 9.8m/s/s, and an object has a sustainable acceleration of 9.81m/s/s away from the Earth, then the object will eventually be able to break free, and escape.

The key, is that the acceleration has to be sustainable, ie., requires energy. Hence the kinetic+potential (chemical) energy of the rocket, has to exceed the potential energy due to the gravity imparted by the planet.

[TS]

Fardel wants space jokes eh?
Hmmm... I can't think of a single one that does not involve Uranus....

[fardel]

"escape velocity is a bit of a mis-conception"
Hum
I am trying understand the relation between the escape velocity and our Miss conception aka Christy
Why did she want to escape in the first place?

SEJ and Ts are too complicated and too boring for the rest of us ,

Let me explain their theory in in more simple terms

1 Everything which goes up comes down
2 The further out (and up ) you send it , the faster it comes back down ( this may be the explanation for finding little rocks or pebbles in you plate when you eat lentils or salad to or an omelet.

3 This theory does not apply to chicken.
Obviously , event if they cannot reach the acceleration of 9,81 m/s they can fly their head off.
3.1 Chicken which cannot reach the escape breaking speed of 9.81 m/s always end up in your plate (or mine)

"If you want something to stand still above the same spot on Earth, you need to put it 36.000 km away"

Not true
If you want something to stay there , you just tie it down with cables, whatever altitude you want it to be......

I need to correct Vaibhav, as well
"Nury - The escape velocity needed would be 11 Km/sec. For how long i'm not sure. But upto about the level of geo stationary satellites."
It should read
Nury , the escape velocity would be 11 words per line.Dor how long, I don't know, as far as your stationary and your ego can take you, I guess.

[Lift Lurker]

If you want something to stay there , you just tie it down with cables, whatever altitude you want it to be......

I am so happy that grandpa finally begin to recognize importance of cables!

It seems everyone has answer to what height you need to remain in orbit.

So far answers take into consideration the speed, acceleration, whether you want to be geo-synchronous (which mean whether you are sending up chicken or omelet).

But the more important consideration is how attractive you are.

If you are as romantic as the moon, then you need to stay 240,000 miles away. If you are a hot stuff, as hot as the sun you can be 93 million miles away.

[Vaibhav]

Well escape velocity is a term and yes the air drag isnt considered in that.
However it is calculated as per the formula: -Gm1m2/r

wiki says it comes to 11.2Km/s from the surface of earth and yeh the kinetic energy is equal to the gravitational pull.

I tend to agree with it.
Pradeep cant be wrong eh Ram??

[Sarah Jumel]

My brother once caught a big snapping turtle in a canal in New Orleans, brought it home and told my mother to prepare it. She said, you have to help, and you won't want to eat it after you see me butcher it. He said he would. So, liking turtle soup anyway, she proceeded to cut off its head and butcher it.
The head, however, did not cooperate but continued living for some time, snapping, bopping about with neck jerks, and rolling its eyes and LOOKING AT YOU. The heart kept beating too. My brother wired the front paws to his bike handles and wired the live head (carefully, it was still snapping) to the crosspiece where the handlbar met the frame. The heart he carried in a small velvet box a watch had come in. Leaving my mother to her toil, he went about the neighborhood horrifying all the kids (I'm sure now, forty five years later, some are still in therapy.)
When the soup was done, yes, he was unable to eat it. My mother and her friends did.
Perhaps another time I'll tell you about how my father would vocalize the horror of soft shell crabs my mother was eviscerating, in hopes it would spoil our appetites and thus leave more soft shell crab for him. Or perhaps I'll not.

[Nury]

Sarah, that is one of the most disgusting things i have ever heard. It sounds like a horror movie.

thanks for the useful discussion on sending things into orbit. I have made use of the fact in the column for Monday sept 27