This evening, my new friend Taryn and I went on a stroll to find a fruit and vegetable market that came highly recommended. Down a back alley, we stumbled upon the entryway, located amongst a plethora of local vendors selling trinkets and cooking meat on sticks and all sorts of other local foods. It looked like a place that Anthony Bourdaine would visit on No Reservations. The fruit and vegetable market was pretty awesome, stall after stall selling peaches and mangoes and lychees. I stocked up on fresh fruits, as the produce here looked much better than that at the Ren Ren Le, which is the supermarket i've been going to.
The term supermarket does not quite do the Ren Ren Le justice. It sells everything; washing machines, cell phones, produce, candy, cucumber flavored potato chips, and everything else you could imagine. It's kind of like a SuperTarget, only smaller, way more chaotic, and nothing is written in English, and none of the workers speak english, as I found out on my quest for peanut butter, which I did eventually find; they had Skippy brand, but the only thing on the jar in english was the word Skippy. All the fast food joints in town are located next to Ren Ren Le and there's a shopping mall attached too; the whole shopping center draws quite a crowd all the time, and of course, there's a KFC.
The last stop on the grocery tour this evening was a place called Opus, a small western grocery store. It was so nice to be able to read labels, but the selection left something to be desired. I managed to find some corn cereal and some granola bars. Apparently Chinese people prefer seaweed flavored crackers over granola bars for snacking, as I have not seen them in any supermarket yet. I was happy to come home and have some fresh fruit and cereal, neither of which require cooking on a hotplate.
Look for fluff!
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