where we shop part 1 - market street

This is market street.

This street is a couple of blocks from the house which makes it convenient for when I need to pick up some last minute things for dinner.

The street is about 1/4 mile long and has about 30 vendors in stalls, all selling vegetables in season (vegetables always in season: chinese cabbage, spinach, another chinese cabbage, another green leafy vegetable, some more leafy vegetables). When I first went to Market st. it was pretty intimidating to try to figure out which stalls were the best quality and price, because they all look equally good to me. So, my decision on where to shop came down to whose Chinese I could understand the easiest, and who seemed the friendliest.

There is a lady that I go to for fruit most of the time, she seems friendly enough, but I cannot understand a word she says. So most times, I pick out the fruit that I want and watch the scale to see how much it is going to cost, since I won't be able to figure out whether she says it costs 4 rmb or 10 rmb. Then I smile, hand over what I think is right, nod, take the change, say "Xiexie" ("thank you"), and quickly walk away, fooling her into thinking I knew what was up. But I normally have no idea.

This is the stand that I have settled on for my vegetable stand. Their vegetables stand out in appearance, and the girl who works the stand is really sweet. She always greets me with a smile, and when other Chinese people walk up to her and ask her about the foreigner buying vegetables, she always tells them "She can understand Chinese." I'm not sure if she always speaks clearly, without the local slang or if she just does that for me, but I walk to the end of market street every time I go, to see her.

Meat for sale

Different stands sell different things. There are vegetable stands and fruit stands. You have meat stands, and you have stands that sell staples like spices, flour, nuts, and eggs. So most times I go to the market I stop at several stands along the way. I don't have a regular egg person or flour person yet, but I'm on the lookout for one. Normally I just go to the first one I come across.


Oh, one of the stands I forgot to mention is what I'll call the sea/river food/delicacies that sell items such as:

HUGE frogs

river turtles

you can make a delicious platter of eel, turtle, frog, and fish

Going to Market street is especially fun on Saturdays because that is the day when farmers from out of town come in on their bikes and line the street selling their fruits and vegetables, and you can often get a better price on fruit from the farmers.

Buying produce in China is a lot like going to a farmer's market in America, but way more fun because each time you go it is an adventure - complaining about the price of food so the locals know you're in the know about food prices, speaking the local dialect, dodging fish jumping out of buckets on suicide missions, chasing chickens around the street (because, hey, they're running around free and who doesn't like chasing chickens?), covering your nose when you walk past certain meat places, and seeing if you can actually understand what people are saying to you, after the sweet girl at the vegetable stand tells them that you can understand them.