I was never much of a shopper before coming to China. Even as a teenager, I tended to only splurge on books, candles, and perfume. This changed drastically after living in Hengyang, however, and now I can consider myself infected by the disease that requires retail therapy.
Shopping in China runs the gamut from luxury western chains like Coach, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton to flea market stalls that are cheap, chaotic, and full of unexpected treasures. Chinese friends tended to want to take me to shiny places like 步步高 Bu Bu Gao, which I call the "BBQ mall" due to the unfortunate choice in the sign's font; I never completely determined if my friends chose these places because they wanted to show me that China had them, if they thought I would only want to shop in places like those I was used to, or if going there made them feel more upper-middle class. Although Maureen could bargain there, I otherwise often felt I could be in the States.
For a different experience, I much preferred the massive collection of stalls surrounding the 火车站 huo che zhan, or slow train station. It was dirty. It was loud. It sold every conceivable item and more (except English books) - Mao memorabilia sat next to purses and paper money for temples, school notebooks could be next to rice cookers and cell phones. Fakes didn't even try to look authentic. Shops had no order and no discernible names. Things were cheap, and customers could bargain further - the more time, the better. Shopkeepers would nap on lounge chairs in the aisles, and eat lunch or dinner from metal bowls at the cash register (read: random drawer of cash with no order whatsoever). This is where I bought most of my beloved tea sets, sorting through the dusty treasures of three particular shops on the second floor run by cute little families I was fairly certain weren't giving me the "foreigner price." (They even remembered the details of my chit chat from visit to visit.). It was certainly a good place to practice Chinese while simultaneously honing some bargaining skills. When I left, however, even this area was in the process of being swallowed up by a new mall.
Grocery shopping had a similar dichotomy. When I arrived in China, the Xiangjiang supermarket was Hengyang's answer to Publix - shiny organized aisles of packaged goods, produce, and refrigerated dairy. The only difference was the meat section - they had everything from styrofoam-wrapped boneless chicken pieces to butcher-blocks of beef and pork, but fish and frogs were still (mostly) alive in tanks. In the deli area, one could get freshly-carved Peking duck wraps. It was a bit of a surprise to have to pay for cosmetics in a different area, and to fight the mob to get vegetables weighed. When Hypermart was put in across the street from my school, Xiangjiang upped its game to be more competitive (so Communist, I know), adding a luxurious foreign foods section and a wider selection of questionable animal parts in foil packages. One could still see doting grannies picking out the family's rice kernel by kernel, though.
At the local wet market, one could practically find a condensed operational farm (except Chinese farms still tend to be small family plots). Carts from the surrounding countryside came in every morning with the day's bounty. Shelves of every conceivable color were piled high with fruits and vegetables, from cauliflower to bitter melon to peppers to carrots to mushrooms. Tofu came in varieties I had never seen before. Large pieces of skinned cows, pigs, and other indiscernible animals hung from hooks or lay uncovered on tables. Ducks, chickens, fish, frogs, snakes, and more waited in cages, tanks, and tubs for selection and slaughter. At first, I didn't want to sentence a chicken to death of my own accord, but by the time Todd visited, I had worked up the nerve. The whole process was quite impressive - from wringing the neck to blood letting to feather removal - before the chicken carcass was handed to me in a bag, head, feet, and all. It made a delicious soup.
Even the stationary store across from school provided an entertaining diversion around classes. Besides selling useful school supplies and tacky gifts, Chinese flash cards and character notebooks intended for kids but useful for me, things her came with the most amusing Chinglish printed right on them, all in the name of fashion. Most were some motivational variation of the ubiquitous "happy every day," but some were truly unintelligible. Besides amassing a shoe collection bigger than my apartment bin (even the display in China was always my size!) I developed quite a collection of random items from stationary stores both at home and in my office.
Should you travel to China, you can find everything. (Everything is made there, after all.). It's not even necessary to pack, really - just shop as you go. The opportunities are endless.
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