Shopping in China

Fish Bones and Canadian Sausage

It was a perfect day in the neighbourhood even though the temperature this morning was zero the significant factor was the absence of rain. It had stopped raining, there was no precipitation.  We could come out of our little hole and squint and marvel at the sun.  It was also scooter weather, but first coffee.  

We had brought several pounds of black gold, President’s Choice coffee from far off Canada, Zehrs in fact.  Let me get ahead of myself, it is now evening and we are preparing a dinner of Mennonite smoked pork sausages from Detweiller’s.  We packed them frozen in a collapsible freezer poach inside Cheryl’s suitcase and lied to every customs official we could about not carrying any food across international borders.  “No Sir, no food, none, nothing, not a morsel.”  Off course when our tiny reserve of coffee and sausage runs out we may revert to primitive ways.  Have you ever seen that movie about the soccer team whose plane crashes in the Andes.  I’ll say no more. 

We also brought over spices, dried soup mixes, over the counter drugs, oven mits, garbage bags, protein bars and protein shakes, DVD movies and much more.  Yes, the DVD pirated movies available also across the counter in China, although of relatively good quality, are mainly action adventure movies with aimless chase scenes, gratuitess sex, no dialogue and lots of killing.  We are more into the “Sleepless in Seattle” theme and therefore the numerous downloads, hard drives and DVD’s in our luggage, if nothing else we watch lots of TV. 

Okay so we had our coffee now when Matt, a teacher at CTC and his wife Van, ask us to meet them downtown in front of Walmart to go to a Japanese style restaurant for lunch, we quickly check our social calendar and see that it is blank for March and so quickly agree.  The sun is still shining and it is therefore still not raining.  This is after all a semi-tropical monsoon climate.  We bring our back pack, with reusable shopping bags, grab our yellow and orange helmets, which are not CSA approved, and head for the parking area below the building where our mighty SNOW brand electric scooter has been patiently waiting for the past month.  It has been dusty and lonely . 

I fire up the engine and the many highly polluting lead batteries make not a sound, even in motion the scooter is like a stealth bomber.  As a pedestrian I tend to hate scooters because they can silently come up behind you and scare the hell out of you.  As a driver I love scooters because you can silently drive up behind pedestrians and scare the hell out of them. I have written about the zen of scooting before, but my ying and yang is out of sync with the universe because I have not driven for a month, none the less I soon learn to warp and weave and flow with the motion. Soon I am one with the universe.  I am a molecule in turbulent waters and I feel free.  Best of all we did not have to have my secretary call a taxi for us to get down town.  

The scooter is our freedom machine in China.  Unlike Chinese drivers I adhere to basic courtesy, random rules of the road and signal lights when in my favour.  We meet Van and Matt and they escort us over to the Japanese restaurant staffed by Chinese and full of Chinese.  We are the only westerners and people briefly look up and stare.  Van is actually Chinese and she helps us order.  I go for the picture menu with Matt, who like me does not like fish, raw fish, the smell of fish, fish bones, or the sea.  

Food is placed on an assembly line and travels the oblong counter.  Van and Cheryl dig in and have squid, sea weed, octopus, eel, prawns, dumplings made with tofu and numerous other things I could not identify.  Matt and I wanted to sneak out to Pizza Hut but we had beef over fried rice and vegetables with onions. 

 It was a great meal and after we went to, and I am ashamed to admit, that we shop with regularity at Wal Mart, but we do, where we bought some groceries. Like Canada everything here is made in China. Today we scored big and found cheese.  Yes, Jinhua, our city has no cheese, there are few cows in China, most of them defected or died on the long March with Mao. 

 We quickly phoned Mat and Van and told them to come to the dairy section to get some mild cheddar cheese as it was going fast, mainly because we were buying it all and if they didn’t come really soon we would have it all.  The meat department at Wal Mart looks like a pet store mainly because everything for sale is still alive: eels, turtles, fish, frogs and other of God’s creatures that I have not as yet identified but may have originated from the Galapagos Islands.  

Cheryl got some fruit and it all has to be weighed.  Sadly this is a culture that does not know how to queue.  It is basically every man for himself.  I would have thought communism would have taught certain lessons concerning the greater good, but apparently this is but another urban myth, so Cheryl taught them lessons in Q etiquette. One man she noted had been waiting a long time to have his produce weighed while others pushed in front.  There was a mad pack of people with Cheryl in the middle. Like a traffic cop with white gloves she raised both arms effectively blocking the crowd and in particular an aggressive Chinese women with water chestnuts and lotus root. 

Cheryl pushed her bags aside, like parting the Red Sea, allowing the first customer, this lone outlier and his vegetables and next Cheryl to get her things weighed.  After followed a flurry of what may have been vindictive Chinese  the pack fell upon itself in a self destructive fury.  We paid for our groceries at cashier 12.  I always have to mime that I want bags and Cheryl always has to prevent them from over filling the bags.  It takes two. It really does.  

Walmart is a subterranean cavernous structure literally built underground.  We took the escalator to the surface.  I often have a panic anxiety attack thinking what would ever happen to us if the escalator just stopped.  Think about it.  

We got to our bike parked in an area with 400 similar looking bikes.  Here we reposition our groceries into the various compartments on the bike ie under the seat and the little trunk like space behind the passenger, there is a bag holder and some things fit on the floor between my legs. 

We drove to the old section of town where they sell jade and jewelry.  This day a flea market of sorts was going on, so I made a U turn in traffic and I angle parked rural Alberta style by the curb.  People like looking at us because of our rock star good looks or maybe our Western characteristics and large noses as we are told. We do stand out in a crowd at any time.  

We toured the stalls and the stores where we saw everything from Mao posters, porn, ceramic, swords and every type of jade on the planet.  Again kids came up to us smiling to say “hello”.  One store had beautiful calligraphy and detailed nature paintings Robert Bateman would envy, another, a portrait of the Obama family.  When we had enough “window shopping” we crossed the street and sat in a beautiful park by the river.  The country is denuded of nature,  but they do know how to landscape a magnificent park to somewhat compensate for  their monumental environmental degradation of their country. 

On that pleasant and judemental note we mounted our trusty scooter and drove along the river, across the bridge and back to the campus.  Did I mention it was a wonderful sunny day and we had Canadian sausage for dinner.