As we turned the corner, the smell hit first, pungent, musky, and damp. The wet market consisted of a series of garage-like stalls lining a cement walkway. Some had been fashioned into office-cum-bedroom-cum-kitchens, in which the animal traders, bundled up for the weather, were passing the time waiting for customers. In one stall, three middle-aged men and a woman played cards on a folding table; in another, a bored-looking teenage girl watched a television bolted to the wall. As we walked in, a man flung the dregs of his soup bowl into the shallow gutter between the stalls and the walkway, a
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