The Chicken or the Egg?

Which really did come first? Actually, I'm not here to answer these difficult, metaphysical quandaries. Instead, I simply want to present a step-by-step photographic guide to cooking and eating a chicken here in the less traveled parts of the Middle Kingdom.

Step one: Select your bird(s).
Step 2: If you are unwilling and/or unable to kill and defeather the poultry yourself, the chicken merchant usually has a friend who can do it for you at a nominal cost (about 25 cents).

Step 3: Take your dead, defeathered chicken home.

Step 4: Disassemble your bird. Oh, the butchery! (Over the last several weeks I have become exceptionally adept at dismembering poultry. Removing the breasts from the ribcage proved difficult at first, but through trial and error I found an effective method that minimizes the amount of meat left on the carcass.)

Step 5: Cook, according to taste. (Pictured below is my version of kungpao chicken).

Step 6: Enjoy!

Step 7: Dispose of leftovers.