So far Lee has been doing a much better job of posting, so I really do encourage you to go to her blog as well. So I thought I would make a few comments on grocery shopping, and then add some pictures later.
We have a couple little neighborhood grocery stores in range, along with a vegetable market, and a small shop that sells "Western" foods. For larger scale shopping, the two main stores in the area are stores from the French chains of Carrefour and Auchan. Neither bear any resemblance to their counterparts in France, although either is so crowded that it might very well contain the entire population of Paris at any given moment. Auchan, in particular, is quite the zoo. It has a very eclectic collection of merchandise, including motor scooters that are sold right off of the grocery store floor. Upon purchasing one, the buyer has to take it down the escalator with the rest of the shoppers (it is not an escalator with steps, but rather the type with a continuous belt).
In any case, it is hellishly difficult to find anything in either of these monstrosities. The general rule is, if a product is easily recognizable, it will have English on the package. Otherwise, English will be nowhere to be found. Which brings me to my misadventures on shopping for staples like flour and salt. Spread throughout the store are various bags of powders that are not organized by any pattern I can discern. We were able to find cornstarch easily (it had a picture of corn on the bag). After that, it was hopeless. All we could do was wander, and repeatedly fight our shopping cart through the crowds in the same aisles over and over. Finally, I left Emma to guard the cart while I struck out to search one more time.
Eventually, I did find flour, sugar, and salt. None of them were labeled with English, and so I was finally reduced to making my choices based on tasting the shelf residue below each bag. Definitely one of my lowest moments ever. Unfortunately, one of the things I tasted was MSG, and the foul taste stayed in my mouth for the rest of the day.
When I was back at the cart with Emma, a friendly-looking old Chinese man with one tooth was clearly eavesdropping on us. I spoke to him and he did speak English. He had a daughter (or grand-daughter) attending Ohio State University, and he was buying a suitcase to go visit her.
And he graciously confirmed for me that I had indeed purchased flour, sugar, and salt. The next project is going to be finding baking soda. The Chinese don’t bake at home, and we forgot to ship any of it.
