Getting Fresh : Chinatown Market Sells Live Turkeys for Those Who Want to Look Dinner in the Eye

Rolando Munoz likes his Thanksgiving turkey as fresh as he can get it.

That’s why for years, his family and scores of other immigrants have been driving to poultry shops in Chinatown to pick out their Thursday bird despite the sometimes gruesome experience of seeing their dinner alive before it is killed on the spot.

“This is much better because it’s fresh,” Munoz said as he carried his 20-pound turkey to his car from the Canton Poultry shop on North Broadway. “In the (supermarket) it’s frozen for I don’t know how many days, maybe months.”

Freshness is the main attraction cited by most of the shoppers. For many, buying meat at the shop is a common occurrence. But for others, it only happens during the holidays.

The 25-year-old store has the feel of a farmyard, with cages of live chickens, ducks, quail, squabs and pheasants--all to be selected and killed.

“A lot of people have never seen a live turkey,” shop manager John Fong said. “Nowadays children never even get to see what a live chicken looks like except if they go to the farm.”

Last weekend, the shop trucked in about 500 fat turkeys. The white feathered birds do not look anything like traditional wild turkeys, which tend to have reddish-brown plumage. They wobble around loose on the floor, attracting the curiosity of customers who visit the shop mainly to buy fresh chicken--except at Thanksgiving.

“You get better quality and you know it doesn’t have preservatives,” said Charlotte Shoats, who came by bus from Long Beach to help her 62-year-old grandmother buy two turkeys for their friends.

Even so, Shoats confessed to being “grossed out” by the experience at the shop. “As long as I don’t have to watch them being killed, I will be OK,” she said.

Some Chinese customers say they can’t bring themselves to buy a turkey, even for the holiday. Instead, they choose the usual duck or chicken.

“We don’t have to eat turkey to celebrate Thanksgiving,” said Chau Mach of Orange County. “We eat substitutes. This year we eat duck.”

Va Psung of Lincoln Heights says that although he doesn’t like turkey, he will buy one to please his more Americanized children.

“I don’t like turkey because it’s too big and the meat is too dry,” Psung said. “But we will eat turkey because we’ve been in America for a long time and my children like it.”

Even sales of ducks and chickens go up about 15% during the holidays, Fong said, adding that his family ate ham during their first Thanksgivings in this country and gradually eased into eating turkey.

The store opened in 1969 as a small deli selling popular Chinese roast duck. It now specializes in supposedly healthier and leaner chicken, Fong said. During the holidays, it sells as many as 700 chickens a day, clerks said.

Although it’s tough for some people even to watch their Thanksgiving meal being slaughtered at the shop, Juan Sebastian took his home alive.

“My mom’s going to keep it at home in the parking lot until (Thanksgiving),” he said, “so we can kill it and eat it on the same day.”