Grocery Shopping in Shanghai

Check out the rice in mass quantities... and the price is less than you think, as it's in yuan and not dollars. It's the equivalent of about 14 cents per 500 grams... which is what in pounds?! Dragon fruit! It has a similar taste and consistency to kiwi, but is white inside instead of green. We saw this many times peeled and chopped small on the hotel buffet when we were here before, but I had never seen it whole... now I know why it's called dragon fruit.

Yes, it's chicken. Whole chicken, heads and all. Kind of reminds me of the Christmas Day dinner in the Chinese restaurant in the movie, "A Christmas Story"! Apparently the breast meat is removed, then the remaining chicken is salted to preserve it... and it somehow ends up sort of flat. too!
Sign on the way out of the grocery store... perhaps we are expected to shop every day? From the small size of the refrigerators in the housing we saw, this may be the cultural norm.

One of the things our relocation agent in Shanghai did for us last week, besides showing us housing options, was to take us to several grocery/department stores close to wear we may live. She wanted to orient us to the type of stores that were available, and show us what was inside. One of the stores we visited is called Carrefour. We had gone to a Carrefour in Chengdu several times when we were in China 14 months ago, getting Gwen. I actually felt quite homesick for the other folks in our travel group when we went into the store... it didn't feel quite right without them!

But this time not only were we missing our travel companions, we were seeing the store through the eyes of residents, not visitors. We weren't just looking for a few snacks and some bottled water to take back to our hotel room, we were looking for what "real", recognizable food was available. I actually felt a little despair and even panic at one point when I realized that besides some (emphasis on some) of the meat and produce, I didn't recognize much else. Fortunately the signs above the isles were in English as well as Chinese, but then the things I found in the isle were not at all familiar. Although the isle signs were English, nearly all the packaging is Chinese, unless the food is imported. So there is no checking the ingredient list or nutrition information, no decipherable directions to follow for how to prepare anything.

We were able to find a few things that gave me comfort... peanut butter, with a label that although all in Chinese characters, appeared to be Jif; canned tuna; canned Progresso beans, both black and Great Northern; butter, although that was in different sized sticks than we have in the U.S.; cheese, to my great relief, and that was in the 8 oz. Land O' Lakes bricks. That was about the extent of the packaged goods that I am familiar with, and Carrefour is a Very Large store.

My neighbor, who is from the UK and has lived here in the US for a couple of years, told me that food was the hardest thing for her to adjust to here. When she told me this a few weeks ago, I scoffed to myself. How hard could it be, esp. from the UK to the US? But now I see why it is, because even if I had been able to read the labels at Carrefour, like my neighbor can here at our local grocery store, the food would not be any more familiar, and Food Is Comfort. When even that one familiar comfort is no longer familiar, perhaps one feels bereft for a while.

We will have new things to learn in China. Eating differently will be a big one.