were buckets full of live eels and barrels full of other wriggly things, the fish tanks were like children’s round paddling pools and they were overloaded with fish flapping about trying to grab any bit of oxygen they could. A women walked past me holding a rabbit that you couldn’t tell whether it was dead or alive, there were rats for sale just about anything you could possibly eat, chickens and ducks were crammed under baskets it was just awful. I think Jackie our cook soon realised that everybody was finding the experience far too much to cope with we thankfully left the hall at the nearest door. We then had to wait for our bus to arrive as our cookery school was about 10 minutes away and we found ourselves stood under a group of trees all trying to erase the memories of the past 10 minutes of our lives, I am not exaggerating but I felt physically sick and very disturbed by it all. It has just made me even more determined to only eat veggie on this

trip.

Our cookery school had views you could die for, it was quite far into the countryside and run by an Australian lady who had been living in China for the past 4 years. We were cooking outside but undercover and had lots of fanning trying to cool down already hot air, we were all wondering how much hotter it would become once we all started cooking, but to be honest it wasn’t too bad, as the weather had become a little more hazy and stopped the blazing glare from the sun. We were to make about 5 dishes but first we had to prepare our veg, it wasn’t anything really different than how you cook Chinese at home, except for the amount of oil you used, to be honest it was far too oily for my liking. First we made some little steamed tofu balls filled with a mixture of chill, garlic and a few other spices, Chinese garlic is nowhere near like the strength of the stuff you get back home. Then we did stir fried eggplant, then cashew nut with stir fried