Impressions from the Southern Capital 南京: Adventures in Food Shopping

Food shopping has never been my favorite thing to do, but here in China, it has risen to a whole new level. The first few days we were here, my stomach hadn't caught up with the rest of me, so no food was looking very good. But with few items left in our apartment by our predecessors, Brad and I ventured into a local grocery store. We selected our cart and rode the moving sidewalk down into the store. Paper goods looked familiar, so we were okay there, but then the challenges soon began. After over an hour of trying to figure out what we were looking at, we left with just over $100 Chinese dollars (yuan) or about $16 worth of items, which included rolls, soy sauce, apples, a couple of cucumbers and tomatoes, and some cookies. We didn't recognize anything in the meat/poultry/fish department, and the only frozen meat we found was duck.

I realized that I was in no shape to be selecting food, and, thankfully, my stomach has arrived, and we decided to try again, or Brad was going to starve. He set the limit at four meals of rice. We had our shopping bags in hand, our smart phone translator app primed, and we were ready to try again. We found a super Carrefour store (the Walmart of France) only two subway stops away, and were ready to shop. It was a great store, an interesting combination of Chinese and international shopping. There were people to help in every aisle, recommending the best laundry detergent and steering us away from the packaged Tysons chicken breast to the local fresh breasts. Surprises were everywhere! The pictures below offer a few. A truly incredible offering was an in-store stir fry station. We piled numerous types of noodles into a take-out container and then pointed to the vegetables we wanted. The stir fry cook put it all together with sauces and spices, handing us a complete dinner for less that $3 Brad was saved.

We are still milk-challenged. Brad found some boxed soy milk, which he is using on the Chinese version of corn flakes. He says the combination tastes just like Frosted Flakes, but I'm not ready to go there yet. Skim or nonfat milk is tougher to find. We finally found some, again in a box -- not in the normal dairy section. We put some in our cart to try, but somehow it didn't make it home. I'm taking this as an omen, but I am not giving up.