Fuddland
Subtitle: The Evil Scary Monkeys of Lu Shan
Look at this pathetic little fella:
Feel sorry for him, don’t you? You’d like to coddle and cuddle and love him for ever and ever, wouldn’t you? He’s just hungry and wants a little bit of food, that’s all, right?
Wrong. He wants all of your food, he wants it now, and he isn’t going to take no for an answer.
One part of the forests of Lu Shan is home to a group of some kind of monkey that have, over the years and generations, come to expect—nay, demand—tasty snacks from the visitors that dare to wander through their domain. So it would be quite unwise to, say, take out a half-eaten packet of biscuits from your coat pocket right in front of two of these agile little chaps and attempt to stow it away in your bag, because [as the woman who did this found] they’ll come bounding towards you with their bony fingers and bared teeth, with every intention of relieving you of your biscuity treats. Of course this was not all the woman’s fault; the blame mostly lies with the countless people who have come before and [directly, or indirectly through thoughtless littering] given these monkeys an insatiable sweet-tooth.
Foolishly, we thought we were safe sitting some way from where we first encountered the monkeys, and sat down on a bench at the Dragon Head Precipice to snack on some bread rolls, but before we knew what was happening, a lone and larger-than-the-others scavenger crept up on us. Reverting to our base states, Mary yelped and threw her roll over the precipice while I grabbed my camera tripod and gave the ground a thump in an effort to scare the mangy monkey away. But he was not deterred and made off with our bag of rolls—then sat brazenly nearby and got to work ripping open the plastic and chowing down.
Filthy fish to fry
Walking back up to the town, we came across a formerly-large and now very muddy lake that seemed to have had the plug taken out, with a fair number of fishermen dotted around its banks.
On the pavement above were people selling their freshly-caught fish, which were laid out on the ground—no tables, no plastic sheets, not even a newspaper betwixt fin and filth. As I took a quick photo, the gentleman asked me to buy one, to which I replied that I didn’t want to buy, I just wanted to take a picture; in Chinese, this forms a pleasant little rhyming couplet which caused some snickering from the people standing nearby:
- Man
- 买买买！
- Me
- 我不要买，我只要拍！
