Welcome to Street Vendors

As well as incredible street food, China has a street vendor for just about everything that you can imagine. There are (as I like to call them) nomadic street vendors and more permanent ones too. Usually with the help of a bicycle, a nomad vendor will carry their trade with them throughout a neighbourhood or two, often ringing a bell or shouting out their services. The more permanent ones set up shop each morning at the same place and are just as reliable as any service provider with four walls.
  

Those are bunny rabbits and guinea pigs.

 As well as the photos I have managed to snap so far, I have also seen a mobile nursery being wheeled by two people. In the early nineties in China, there were even professional ear experts travelling through neighbourhoods offering services. I have seen florists on wheels, books for sale on the back of a bike, clothing, bedding, toys, and birds. Even these wonderful spoons I bought were from the back of a vendor's cart - filled with crockery and cutlery of all kinds.

Whilst the act of selling goods from such vehicles is technically illegal, the phenomenon of street vending is a cornerstone of local trade, and employs almost as many individuals as it services. Police do not interrupt the vendor unless they are in a particularly bad mood.

In this post, I will not even attempt to begin to cover the culinary world of street vendors. That task is so mammoth and daunting and distracting that it will have to wait. It will also have to wait until I develop some kind of fat-immunity to the copious amounts of food I have been eating here. Hahhaha.
But seriously. 

Above left, you can see a more permament shoe repairs stall vendor and his son. To the right here, is a lady selling hoisery. And below, goldfish.