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When we first arrived in Kunming, we were told that a trip to the grocery store would take three hours. Yeah, right.
We’re not feeding an army.
We’re feeding something even harder to satisfy: the American Appetite.
Products on your shopping list don’t look like what you’re used to.
Take for instance, salt.
The package has a palm tree and elephant on it. Check out the white bag next to the Skippy mystery nutbutter. What happened? Did the Morton Salt girl have problems getting her Visa?
Or baking soda. This Armor and Hatchet was a real find.
Deodorant, shaving cream, and cupcake papers are also on the “impossible to find in China” list. But Depends Diapers are easy to find.
Not that I need to know.
There’s the Teenie Weenie store, which is not what you think…
There are bootleg versions of everything from ice cream to DVDS. The good news is that one DVD you purchased for 2 american dollars contains twenty-four 007 movies.
The bad news is that your scoop of Rum Raisin from HaaYin-Daz might contain ming beans.
The other thing you never see shopping is other Westerners. I count how many fair-skinned foreigners I see while prowling around Kunming’s main shopping district. Yesterday, I saw a record of five. One Swede, two Germans, an American backpacker and a parent of a kid we actually knew from school.
Now that is something to write about.