There is always a night market outside my residential compound if the weather was fine and it stretched for a few kilometres. It was nice to go for a walk after work, after dinner and look at the local night market sights and sounds. There is often a huge variety of stalls selling anything from clothes to food to groceries. And there will always be at least one or two medicine peddlers. Most of the time, they will be delivering a presentation or a speech about the health benefits of their medical products. Occasionally you get someone who is into heavier marketing antics because he will bring along live snakes and tortoises. The crowd normally swells up in these occasions but I am not really sure if anyone buys these products or they were just there for the “show”. Also I never really understood what the peddler said because the locals in Shenyang generally use a dialect called Dōngběihuà or Northeastern Mandarin, which is not standard Chinese Mandarin. Nevertheless, selling is hard business and I will normally stop by curiously to see how the sales pitch is going.
For more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_Mandarin
