Shop Until You Drop, Part 2

I have a kitchen in my Beijing apartment -- quite a nice kitchen, in fact. But for the first months of my stay in China, it remained sadly unused, waiting for me to work up the nerve to shop for food -- to brave the clamor of Beijing markets and deal with the mysteries of Chinese money in crowded situations without the benefit of knowing Chinese.

Gradually, I have ventured forth to try my hand at buying dinner in the raw. There are challenges involved -- shopping in China sometimes seems more like an athletic event than a domestic pursuit -- but it's well worth the effort. All the ingredients are here, if you know where to find them, to make you favorite cuisine from back home.

I began my career as a Beijing shopper with two Western-style supermarkets where shopping is a breeze -- on the ground floor of the Friendship Store on Jianguomenwai, and in the basement of the Lufthansa Shopping Center. (I am told there is another good supermarket in the basement of CVIK Plaza on the south side of Jianguomenwai, opposite the CITIC building -- but I haven't tried it yet.) Not only will you find plenty of foreign goods at these places with recognizable brand names and English labels -- such un-Chinese things as cheese and tomato sauce -- but shopping is exactly like it is back home. You are able to browse the aisles, examine whatever you like, fill your basket, and pull out your wallet one time only at the cashier on your way out the door. Unfortunately, you pay for this convenience in a big way. The Western-style supermarkets will take a monster bite from your budget, and unless you are a visiting VIP it is wise to use them sparingly for the occasional Western splurge.

Fortunately, since "Opening and Reform" in the late seventies, untold thousands of private markets have sprung up in Beijing, large and small, offering a wide variety of food and consumer goods, often at inexpensive prices. This is not a country with empty shelves. The larger stores are hard to miss, for they often announce themselves with a gaudy display of balloons and streamers outside on the street. If you walk inside, the first thing you will discover about a Chinese supermarket is that it is not really one store but many, composed of numerous small departments and individual concessions, some of which are separately run -- and in fact you will often find the same items at different counters at slightly different prices.

The next thing you will find is that you can't simply pick up items and examine them, for everything is kept on shelves out of reach, guarded by a small army of clerks. If you don't speak Chinese, the first skill you will need to develop is getting a clerk's attention and point to what you want. "No, not that one . . . keep going! . . . yes, yes, that one!" When you finally have the right jar in hand, you must now decide if it's really peanut butter, as you hope -- or jellied eel, as you fear. Some merchandise is universal, of course, such as Coca-Cola and coffee, but the Chinese eat a bewildering variety of foods, many of which are utterly alien to our Western sensibilities, and figuring out what something is, with Chinese characters on the label, is often an art in itself.

So now you need to pay. If the particular counter you are at is a private concession -- which is often the case with alcohol, for instance -- you will pay the clerk who has been waiting on you so patiently. But many counters are part of the collective store -- the clerk will write out a charge slip in triplicate, you must take these slips to a separate cashier somewhere on the floor, pay, bring back one copy of the invoice with an official "chop" on it, give it to the clerk, and that jar of peanut butter is finally yours. You repeat this process from counter to counter -- a bottle of wine, soap, toilet paper, batteries for your Walkman -- each a separate, time-consuming transaction, from pointing to paying. Where I shop, at my local branch of the Five Gold Star Store, there is also a somewhat dank butcher section where you can buy chicken, meat, fish, various frozen meats, and a few fascinating items you'd never find back home, such as live frogs.

The Chinese supermarkets present some unique challenges, but the prices are set, there is no need to bargain, and you can generally rest assured that you are receiving your correct change and aren't getting cheated. You are ready now for advanced shopping. Next week's column: "Shop Until You Drop, Part 3" -- navigating the maze of farmer's markets on the streets.

Next Week: Shop Until You Drop, Part 3

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