What's for Dinner?

Multiple recommendations pointed Dave and I to the Stoneboat Cafe - a picturesque little cafe/bar on a park lake near all of the embassies in Beijing. When we got there, we were disappointed to find that the day we had chosen for our visit coincided with the public works departments maintenance and draining of the lake. Dozens of workers were in and around the now muddy puddle pulling out floundering fish and sticking them into a large vat.

They will likely them back after they refill the lake, we thought. Nope. Towards the end of the workday, the men started filling plastic bags with suffocating fish and taking them home. When the workers were gone, a crowd of people remained...just watching the puddle. Soon, one man charged head-on into the mud with a net and started hunting for the smaller relatives of the older fish that were now on their way home as dinner. With this one man leading the charge, all of the observers joined in. One after another they waded through the mud to the puddle in the center hunting for their next meal out of this drained city lake. While our afternoon by the lake was not as picturesque as it might have been, we may have witnessed one of the most absurd variations from Western culture. While Americans may find treasure in unlikely places (i.e. the street, garbage cans, etc.) we rarely find dinner in public urban landscapes.