Honesty

There is this intensity when you walk through Chinatown and that especially true on weekends. There are thousands of people out on the streets and all these different stores selling from jewelry to fish, fake designer handbags, cloths, vegetables, groceries, meat, fake watches to fruits. There are also hundreds of restaurants and the smell from all these different places unites to one “Chinatown Smell” that gets especially strong during the summer months.

There is fish and shellfish that is still alive when it ends up in customers shopping bags. There are chicken and ducks that are displayed in restaurant windows with their heads still on. You can find dried sea horses and big buckets with dozens of alive frogs waiting to end up on a dinner table.

The open display of animals being turned into food might seem disturbing and cruel but isn’t that approach much more honest then what we do in the West? Aren’t we completely unaware of where our food comes from?

Do we know what had to happen to get the meat on our burgers, the fish in our fish-sticks or a stake on our plate? Does not knowing make a difference?

"Honesty" Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Chinatown Project, Fish head, June 2009

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