To the editor:
Shopping is an experience in China. A grocery store here brings to mind the Old General Store that many of my readers will be familiar with. Crowded with all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies. Each one is filled with all sorts of things that are necessary but with a little thought you can probably do without. However, like most of my readers I really like food. So a trip to the grocery store becomes an adventure.
The first thing that you will notice different about the grocery store in China is space and layout. If you walk into American grocery stores you will notice that much thought goes into their layouts that is there to welcome you. Entering the store, the floor is level with the sidewalk. Park the car. Get out and walk right into the store, like walking into your own living room! Aisles are wide and lighting is brilliant. Comfy? Good.
Sunday is the big shopping day. If you go to the store, expect to pushed, jostled, bumped, brushed, and otherwise sloshed around in this river of people. All due respect to President Bush, but his idea of a surge is ridiculous when you see the Chinese shopper on a Sunday outing. I am learning to do a new dance in order to survive. I call it the shopping shuffle. Not too difficult.
Grab a basket, Turn sideways and act as if you are on a mountain ledge three inches wide and you are having to use the ledge to get to the other side of the mountain! Coming in the opposite direction is a very determined mountain goat. It’s up and over, down and under, twist and turn. Oh yes, all your neighbors are yelling at the top of their voices telling you to be aware of the mountain goat. All of his kinfolk are neighing the same information to him. I have only gone 10 feet!
First stop, the meat counter. If you have a weak stomach you may want to skip to the classifieds now. While the Chinese have not figured out how to consume the squeal of a pig, everything else is useful. Pork is the most popular meat here. The whole pig is consumed. And it is consumed within hours of being killed. In the early morning as I biked to work I would be passed by the pork brigade. Guys on mopeds with halves and quarters of pork strapped to their mopeds like we strap deer to trucks. Killed at 3 a.m., delivered at 6 a.m. sold by 8 a.m. and cooked by 5 p.m.
In the grocery store or the meat market you look at the carcass and indicate what you want. the Butcher then hauls the slab of meat down and proceeds to wield a great cleaver and knife to cut your piece out. Steaks and chops as we know them in tidy little plastic trays are rare. Instead your butcher hacks at this slab of meat with a device that looks like a decent broadaxe, His assistant takes a plastic bag and grabs the chunk of meat and zip its in your basket. The sound of the cleaver falling and breaking bones, of striking through to the chopping block gives a very abrupt staccato rhythm to the clerks yelling at the top of their lungs about the specials of the moment. Thump! Crack! How Ma! Crack! Thump!
Did you want fish? Oh then come to the seafood aisle. When the Tennessee Aquarium opened I was privileged to be invited to a preview tour. As the only freshwater aquarium in the U.S. it tried to show life along the Mississippi River. The journey began high in the Appalachian Mountains, trickled down until you ended up in the Louisiana Delta. As you leave the exhibits you cross a stream of water that has numerous large catfish. After my tour, I saw the fish and made the faux pas of asking if I could have one for dinner!
The Chinese grocery store will have tanks and tanks of fresh fish. Which one do you want? That one. OK. Out comes the net, in goes the fish, and flop! Smack! Crack! Sliced, and delivered to your basket in a nice plastic bag. Picked, nicked, gutted and bagged right before your eyes. Now on to the vegetables.
Finally you have grabbed your goodies and are waiting at the checkout counter. Do not leave a space between yourself and the person in front! If there is even the hint of a space three people will appear. And, as it is in the U.S., your luck usually puts you behind the person who has to find their wallet, and then painstakingly counts out each penny and then re-adds the 101 items purchased to make certain the clerk and and register are not cheating him. For the three hundred or so people waiting in line its just another day of Sunday shopping!
Orpheus Allison
Shanghai, China
