Chickens are popular in China, too, but not as pets. It is more common to see live chickens being carried home from market. Since a live chicken is fresh chicken, this is the preferred way to buy them. And remarkably, live chickens carried upsidedown like this are almost as immobile as these dead ones.

It wouldn't occur to me to go into business selling goldfish from the back of a bicycle. When I saw this vendor, I thought he must be unique. Deb and I joke that you never see anything in China only once, and sure enough, within 50 yards of this guy we saw another bicycle cart loaded with goldfish. Think of the carnage if this guy should have an upsetting bike accident.

It doesn't matter if it is likely that something can be carried by bicycle. It only matters if it is possible. I don't know what the primary market is for balloons here. In the US, I wouldn't expect to see them for sale on the street unless there was a parade going by. But here you can see balloon vendors wandering the downtown streets almost any day of the week.

Seeing a bike loaded with party hats carried aloft on something like a candelabra was weird enough for me to want to take a picture. But I never expected the guy to stop in the middle of the bike lane to take a call on his cell phone. Was it an emergency call from an unprepared hostess at a child's birthday party? Or maybe an automatic notification from his stock portfolio telling him about a "buy" opportunity in party hat futures? I'll never know.

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