Chopsticks covered with a plastic sheet – in line with colleague Younghee’s thread on freshness and protection (that’s her in the baseball cap, below). Given that you might expect (rain) water to be associated with it’s cleaning properties – to what extent are the chopsticks covered because a damp wooden chopstick behaves and tastes differently to a dry one? Or that it is locally assumed that the rain carries with it pollution? – whilst this pot of ‘sticks was exposed to the rain, more sheltered pots were not similarly covered.

These photos are from Chongqing during a wake-up-with-the-city walk – one of the research methods we use to orientate ourselves with a new location. We awoke at some unreasonable hour it was raining hard, a due to distinct lack of umbrellas had to dance our way through the deluge to eventually grab breakfast of steaming congee, deep fried sugar-flour washed down by soy milk – morsels of choice for manual labourers, students and hungry researchers alike. Good times. A little more here.