WalMart- China Style

Walmart: China-Style

Henan Province, China

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

I should be filled with shame for my great delight in shopping at Wal-Mart.  But I am filled with no shame.  I am a Wal-Mart shopper. So when I discovered that there was a Wal-Mart in the next city, I was thrilled.  What a great field trip this was going to be for me.  So I had my students take me there and I told them in advance that I was going to take lots of pictures.  And we went up and down every aisle and they explained everything I touched.  And if you think Wal-Mart sells us a lot of Chinese junk, you should see the junk they leave behind for the Chinese.  They had some pretty ugly stuff.

 

I loved the food section the best.  There were open bins of teas that people just scooped up with their hands and bought by the gram.  The frozen vegetables are in a big container and sold by weight rather than being pre-packaged.  There were fruits that I could not identify.  The carrots are the size of small baseball bats. The grapefruits are the size of basketballs.  There were 10 varieties of mushrooms.  Seaweed was a big seller.


Drooping from a hanger was the entire skin of a chicken.  It looked as if the skin had soaked in a brine for a few years and then it was stretched and dried out.  I am told it is “quite good”.  Beside the chicken skin were the stretched out noses of cows.  There were sheep penises.   Chicken feet can be purchased to eat right there.  And you can have them boiled or fried.  I was told they “are quite good.”

One of my students wanted to buy something on the second floor.  So she had to pay for it before she left the floor.  But she was told that she could not shop on the other floors since she had checked out.  I guess you are only allowed to buy from one floor at a time.  So we went up to the third floor and I stuffed the tea and receipt in my pocket and we continued with my exploration.  I was photographing the dried meats when a store manager stopped me.  I was not allowed to take photos of the merchandise.  I guess Wal-Mart does not want any recorded documentation on just see how very low they can stoop.

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