During my ten-day stay in Shanghai, we ate street food. But we also shopped at Carre Four, a French-based mega grocery store in Pudong. From a distance, the shelves seem familiar. Close up, the cultural differences become apparent. The variety of food is mindboggling, the labels are in Chinese, the clerks do not speak English, and often the food is live.
Fresh seafood...
...including live eels
...and live turtles. Poor dears. In the meat section one can hear the steady chop chop chop of meat cleavers separating fresh beef from bone.
A sampling of noodles and rice. One container that fed five adults and two children cost the equivalent of U.S. $1.50.
Take away food. This is a Chinese "salad bar". You pick out the ingredients and ladle them onto a tray. Then you visit a clerk, who mixes your choices to your specification with oils, sauces, spices, and other condiments. This section is packed with well-to-do Chinese on Saturdays and Sundays.
More choices from the "salad bar."
Chewing gum aisle. The candy and chips aisles are even more extensive.
A variety of meat- or vegetable-filled dumplings, all freshly made.
And enormous amounts of fresh and dried fruit and vegetables. People are standing in line (if you look closely) for fresh eggs, which had just arrived that morning.
Prices were amazingly different from what I expected. California wines were more expensive than French wines, and Great Wall wines cost only $3/bottle.
Chocolate chips were prohibitive at $8/bag, but kroepoek (shrimp wafers common to the Philippines or Indonesia) cost only 30 cents per bag of approximately 60 precooked chips. I found American foods in the imports aisle, and spicy condiments, such as sambal, for 1/10 the price I am accustomed to paying.
Fashionable Chinese girl in boots and hot pants.
You have to hold onto everything, including Maddie!
Fresh seafood...
...including live eels
...and live turtles. Poor dears. In the meat section one can hear the steady chop chop chop of meat cleavers separating fresh beef from bone.
A sampling of noodles and rice. One container that fed five adults and two children cost the equivalent of U.S. $1.50.
Take away food. This is a Chinese "salad bar". You pick out the ingredients and ladle them onto a tray. Then you visit a clerk, who mixes your choices to your specification with oils, sauces, spices, and other condiments. This section is packed with well-to-do Chinese on Saturdays and Sundays.
More choices from the "salad bar."
Chewing gum aisle. The candy and chips aisles are even more extensive.
A variety of meat- or vegetable-filled dumplings, all freshly made.
Prices were amazingly different from what I expected. California wines were more expensive than French wines, and Great Wall wines cost only $3/bottle.
