In Shanghai you can find market stalls and greengrocers who sell fruits and vegetables at each and every corner of the street, their colors, flavors and diversity undoubtedly give an exotic touch to a city where you can recognize the West, but which never loses the emotion of the Far East. A foray to any market in Shanghai has the energy of adventure, of a real discovery of things, experiences, new tastes, absolutely unknown for a true-born European.

From extreme exotica - eels looking like snakes, which are delicacies in this corner of the world and  seem to have a very good meat, or dried snakes (at a stall of traditional pharmacy), eggs, kept in mud for a month (God knows what "extraordinary" taste they have) - to spectacularly colored fruits, or recognizable vegetables, a market in Shanghai is a...story without end. Which needs...a (colored) guide.

• The lotus root, which is cooked in many different ways, a paste being made of it which is very good in cakes, is rich in fibers  and poor in saturated fats and has many vitamins. It is also served with rice.
  
  

• The egg-plant seemed very interesting to me, by its shape, which is very longish, compared to ours, it rather looks like a cucumber, as for the rest, its features are international

• Water chestnuts are not very different from ours, but instead of growing in chestnut trees, they grow in swamps and they are excessively used in the Chinese cuisine. They have the same sweetish aroma and they are high in fibers, potassium and other vitamins, and the Chinese usually combine them with bamboo shoots or ginger, or make a special cake, of them, on New Year’s Eve.
  
  

• Winter melon or the melon growing in wintertime looks like a marrow but it’s bigger and is typical of Asia. Soups and sweets are made of it.
  
  

• We all heard about bamboo shoots and we find them in our country, too, but I caught them when they had been just pulled up from the ground. Besides the proteins and the aminoacids they contain, they seem to kill cancer cells.
  
  

• The kai-lan is a kind of broccoli and is widely spread in the Chinese cuisine.
  
  

• The Chinese cabbage, bok choy, can be found in other parts of the world, it has a lot of vitamin A, minerals and antioxidants.
  
  

• Edamame are young soy pods, which are cooked in steam, are boiled, with salt and they contain carbohydrates, proteins and nutrients. Delicious!
  
  

Rice is omnipresent in every market here, it’s put in scores of separated sacks, with different prices, in every store (although they looked alike to me) near many ranges of tofu, cut, as if they were some huge bars of soap.

What was really unpleasant for me (as I am a big animal lover) was seeing how some poor little turtles were kept alive in a string bag, waiting for their buyer...According to tradition, they are used for cooking a soup which is very rich in proteins, for sick people or for those who went through an operation.

Around the markets there are also grocery stores with all sorts of things, all kinds of meat, dried sea food, dates and other fruits, seeds and the ordinary chicken claws, the Chinese delight, as a substitute for snack..."yummy(?!?)

I shared you...the adventure.