My Life in China, Part 20- Grocery shopping

It’s time for some grocery shopping. As I scribble a list, I started thinking of the differences in this experience while living in China. It seems like such a mundane thing, and in many ways, we take a lot for granted as we zoom over to our local supermarket.

Do they have supermarkets in China? Yes, of course, but are they the size of football fields with aisles wide enough to drive a car down stocked with a hundred varieties of the same product? No. At least not yet. Grocery shopping is very much a different experience in China, especially if you live outside of the largest cities. In Beijing and Shanghai, life is similar to any other major city in the world. Big box stores are spreading. Walmart and BJs are very active in China, and just as they spread like weeds here, they do the same there. But in the Baodings or the Wafangdians of the country, those second-tier cities note yet discovered by big business, you can still catch a glimpse of times past, and it’s lovely.

What do I mean by that? Well, most Chinese shop for the day, not the week or month. Many don’t even own a refrigerator. This doesn’t mean they hop into their car and go to the grocery store daily. For one, there are probably several stores within a 20-minute walk from their home, so no need for a car (maybe a scooter or bicycle). And two, who would go to a grocery store to buy marked-up and un-fresh produce when there is the morning market?

What do I mean? Take, for example, my in-laws. Every morning, before the crack of dawn, vendors from the countryside converge in front of my in-law’s apartment and set up shop. Fruits, vegetables, meat, seafood, kitchenware, clothes, knickknacks of daily life, you name it, are spread out on tarps or displayed on carts and tables every single morning two minutes from their door. From before dawn to 9:30 am, it is a frenzy of shopping. Crowds flood the street, traffic stops, and people haggle and dicker for their daily needs. There are carts heavy and dripping with fresh-made tofu. Red-faced and calloused-hand vendors call out to customers over steaming pots of local specialties. People slurp hot sweeten soybean milk while dipping their fried dough sticks. The smell of sizzling egg and mung bean crepes spread with spicy sauce and sprinkled with green onion fills the air. Nuts, seeds, dried fruit, spices- the abundance of China’s countryside all on display like some exuberant parade of life! Then, just as quickly as it appears, the police car drives down and announces it is time to close up shop, and it all just vanishes. Within 20 minutes, traffic reappears and it is like nothing happened. My mother-in-law returns home, laden with bags filled with the ingredients for the day’s meals.

This experience is by no means unique, and my wife and I visited many wet markets when we lived in Baoding. We had a local fruit vendor with the freshest and sweetest fruit you’ve ever tasted right on-campus. For a few extra cents, he would even use his special tool (a cross between a vegetable peeler and a knife) to peel and clean a pineapple for you so quickly he was like a fruit ninja. You can’t beat the freshness found in these markets. Live seafood straight from the sea, chickens, ducks, geese still clucking, quacking, and honking, vegetables pulled warm from the earth, and sun-kissed fruit juicy, ripe, and picked from the tree that very day.

Conversely, these morning markets can also be a bit off-putting at times. Blood on the street from fresh-killed whatever, rotten vegetables smashed on the sidewalk, broken eggs, stinky fermented tofu, oxidizing meat of questionable freshness lying out without refrigeration, flies, open toilets, and all sorts of nasties. The worse smell I’ve ever encountered was stumbling into a wet market at the end of the day in Xi’an. It was just an empty muddy field of rotting produce. It is the only time a smell almost made me vomit.

But as crazy as this sounds, seeing the darker side of our consumption adds to the excitement. You never know what you will encounter. If you’re near the sea, these markets can be better than an aquarium with their abundance of sea life, often still alive. Visiting a market in China is just a cornucopia for the senses. Sites, sounds, smells, movement, and life! But most importantly, you’re able to experience where your food is from, and you get to meet its caretaker, look into their eyes, see the dirt under their fingernails, see their red cold-kissed cheeks, and the toil of their experience producing your food all open and on display. If there are no watermelon, it’s because its just not the season. There are no styrofoam trays covered in clingfilm, no irradiated bananas, cheap packaging, chemicals, preservatives, sterile lights, or distance- there is just you, the farmer, and the food, and you take nothing for granted.

So next time you find yourself pushing your cart down an unending isle of consumerism, take a moment and think, is this experience better or more convenient? I don’t know.

Cheers!