Happy Obscura Day!
I think that everyday should be Obscura day. Surely it could be celebrated more than once a year. I mean, c’mon a day to discover unusual places, back room tours and explore hidden wonders in your hometown or anywhere else.
Last year, the Vancouver Police Museum held a special forensics tour. Although I find the museum small and there’s not a lot to see, the special events the museum holds are pretty cool. I had a lot of fun at their past ballistics and pathology workshops.
This year, the Sun Yat Sen Classical Gardens offered tours exploring their grotto beneath Ting Mountain.
And had we not gone to Chinatown a couple of weekends ago, I may have signed up.
But not only that, Sean and I had fun walking all around Chinatown, absorbing all the sights, textures and of course, the unmistakable smells.
When I was a child, I spent many a weekend in Chinatown. It was where my mom did her shopping and where we went to eat dim sum. But like most cosmopolitan cities with a large Chinese community, Chinatowns are often run down.
I like how there have been efforts in the past few years of trying to revive ours with trendy Asian fusion restaurants, bars and lounges, upscale furniture store and art galleries. But it takes time and will be years before it doesn’t have that DTES feeling anymore.
Still, if it was completely cleaned up, then it would be Richmond now, wouldn’t it?
The Chinese business owners didn’t mind that Sean and I were taking pictures of their stands filled with strange delicacies. The most perturbing thing I saw for sale? Dried silverfishes! How do they get so many silverfishes enough to fill an entire pail? Buy them in bulk!
One cool photo I got was inside an herbal store. We were buying something, so I had hope the purchase would buffer any sort of resistance. But the owners seemed to be cool with it.
I was conflicted and yet fascinated at the same time checking out these preserved seahorses.
Had they not reminded me of HR Giger’s artwork, I think I would’ve been more perturbed. As it were, I found myself appreciating how they look in their preserved state. Is it wrong that I found them to be quite beautiful?
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