Burmese jade

Last night we found the Temple Street night markets, bright, vacuous and shiny. Although the beef with glass noodles and enoki mushrooms [牛肉蘑菇] and Yanjing beer was a bargain at $48 HK dollars.

The fish, cockles, eels, and razor shells were lined up in plastic buckets, still fresh and alive and waiting to be consumed.

Selling Jade and bracelets in the 31 degree heat wouldn't be hard to take, but sitting behind the plastic would make the humidity much better. They are industrious Hong Kong people. But the shopping strips and malls are a haven for all. Almost more worship than the Tin Hau Buddhist temple. The other God is gambling.

This is from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself:

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The scents of the night markets and Nathan Road are a paean to life in a crowded, fetid, and humid city.