6 Tips for Navigating the Chinese Supermarket

6 Tips for Navigating the Chinese Supermarket
Nov 01, 2012 By Michael Evans , eChinacities.com

At first glance, Chinese supermarkets appear to offer a much-needed oasis of familiarity and order to newly-arrived expats struggling to make sense of their unfamiliar surroundings. The well-lit and neatly arranged displays seem like direct transplants from life back home, and the store itself may even be a Western chain such as Carrefour or Tesco. 

But after a few minutes wandering the aisles, it soon becomes clear that a supermarket in China is very different from what most of us are used to, and not only because they sell durian and live turtles. The procedures for buying groceries are not always easy to decipher, and attempting to navigate them for the first time can quickly lead to confusion, frustration and an empty stomach. Here are a few tips to make your first visit to a Chinese supermarket go just a bit more smoothly.

1) Fruits and Vegetables
Simply identifying the wide range of mysterious fruits on sale and matching them with the prices listed can be a struggle by itself. But once you know what you want to buy, there are plenty of additional hurdles left to jump. First, you'll need to get a plastic bag. These are often distributed at the weighing stations scattered across the produce section, though sometimes they are passed out to shoppers by wandering sales assistants or (if the store is feeling particularly lazy) left sitting in a roll atop a random pile of fruit.

Once you've filled your bag, you need to take it to a weighing station to be priced. In some stores, different fruits and vegetables need to be weighed at specific counters, so it's best to use the one nearest the display where you picked out your produce.

2) Specialty Items
Fruits and vegetables are not the only things that need to be priced at a special counter, as opposed to at the checkout line. Some high-end products must not only be priced, but also purchased at particular counters within the store. In addition to items such as kitchen appliances and silverware, this also frequently applies to health and beauty products such as skin cream or deodorant. Once you have decided what you want to buy, notify a sales clerk who will write you a receipt and direct you to the nearest cash register. After paying and receiving a second receipt, go back to the original clerk who will hand over your new purchase, often sealed inside a bag to mark it as already paid for.

3) Meat
As you'll quickly discover, meat is not sold in pre-wrapped and priced packages, but is instead splayed out in anatomically vivid piles within the refrigerated display case. Shoppers specify the cut and the amount to the clerk behind the counter, who chops up the desired amount to order. So if you're planning to buy meat, make sure you know your Chinese numbers. And remember that like most things, meat is measured in units of 500 grams each, called a "jin" in Chinese.

And make sure you're absolutely sure what kind of meat you're actually getting. Just because one section of the freezer is pork doesn't mean the one next to it logically has to be beef. That one could be pork, too, but is displayed separately because it's a different brand. Here again, a little vocabulary helps: pork is "zhu rou" and beef is "niu rou."  Chicken tends to be easier to identify.

4) Checkout
When you get to the checkout counter and start to put your things down on the belt, the cashier will typically ask if you have a shopper's card – your answer will likely be "mei you" ("No, I don't."). You will quickly notice that the end of the counter is conspicuously lacking in shopping bags. While the cashier may offer one to you if you have a large amount of purchases, you may have to specifically ask for a "dai zi."  Bags tend to come in two sizes, and are provided at a price – usually two or three mao each.

5) Leaving
But as you walk away with bags and change in hand, your shopping adventure is not over yet. As you head towards the exit, you'll see a greeter sending customers off with a friendly (or at times not-so-friendly) "xiexie guangling!"  This person is not only there for politeness' sake. They also have the job of checking and stamping each departing customer's receipt, just to make sure you really have paid for all your purchases. Each shopper usually gets little more than a cursory glance, but the little blue stamp is mandatory nonetheless. So as you leave the checkout counter, make sure to keep your receipt out and have it ready at the door. 

6) Help!
Even for well-prepared shoppers, the supermarket experience can still be a little overwhelming, and sometimes you just need a little help. Thankfully, the army of fuwuyuans standing guard at nearly every aisle and counter are there for the express purpose of making things a bit easier for the befuddled customer. While a few may show the familiar reluctance of waiters and desk clerks, most are eager to help, no matter how nonexistent your Chinese may be. You may even run into a few students working at the store part-time who are eager to have the rare chance to practice their English with a real live foreigner. But of course, keep in mind that as employees of the store, their main job is to make a bigger profit, and most of the products they recommend tend to be on the higher end of the price range.
 

Related links
Online Shopping in China: Beginner’s Guide
How To: Set Up an Online Bank Account in China
Is China Still a Shopping Paradise? What to Buy Here and What Not

Warning:The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: Chinese supermarket help problems encountered in Chinese supermarkets how to weigh things in a supermarket in China expats grocery shopping in China expats Chinese supermarkets

4 Comments

All comments are subject to moderation by eChinacities.com staff. Because we wish to encourage healthy and productive dialogue we ask that all comments remain polite, free of profanity or name calling, and relevant to the original post and subsequent discussion. Comments will not be deleted because of the viewpoints they express, only if the mode of expression itself is inappropriate.

JB

I bet anyone already had an experience to try to find out the correct price of some stuff, but sometimes doesn't seem so clear to do this because the products aren't clearly organized at shelves.

So what do you do at this case? You can say an obvious sentence "check the name of the product on the tag list of the shelf". Unfortunately there are a lot of different names, all in chinese, that even you already had been studied chinese for some time, will be hard to figure out everything.

The simplest way that I've found and explain to my friends: use the numbers of the Bar Code. And you don't have to memorize the number of the product that you are looking for, just the last 4 numbers are enough. Then just check at the Price Tags the same number. So, if you find the similar 4 numbers, then you check the whole thing, just to be sure if it's really what you are looking for.

I already had some bad experience to take something, but the Price Tag were switched at another place, then faking the real price of the stuff.

Seriously, nobody what's to get a big surprise on the bill. So, to be sure what you are picking is the best option.

Nov 03, 2012 02:06 Report Abuse

Archie

Then they should pay someone to clean them up. wages are low, plenty of people. do some work u lazy fuckers.

Nov 02, 2012 03:53 Report Abuse

DaqingDevil

Only one of the supermarkets in my city provides English names on products - some products - so it can be tough trying to work out what spices and types of oils to buy in particular. The tendency is for me to eat Chinese cuisine when I go out and cook a mixture of western and familiar Chinese when I eat at home.
Items such as cheese and butter are also rare commodities. On the positive side the choices of bread are amazing!
Cuts of meat leave a lot to be desired and after 9 months here I am still to find a good beef steak. All in all a visit and to shop at a Chinese supermarket to watch people is a rather enjoyable way to spend an hour. The literal translations on labels also gives me a good laugh!

Oct 26, 2011 17:05 Report Abuse

Mr. Tibbles

The issue with beef here in China is that it's often fresh and not aged like in most western countries. This is why it's not as flavorful and tough. When you buy from a local market, the cow was probably slaughtered that day or maybe a day or 2 before (if they have refrigeration). This is also why most Chinese dishes with beef in them feature the beef that is in some way boiled-the-hell-out-of to make the meat tender, or marinated for a few days. There is a company in Qingdao that does age beef (it has a sticker on the package that says Qingdao Beef) that is USUALLY available at large chain markets like Carrefour and even Lian Hua. It's still not the same, but it's only little better, mostly due to the lack of major meat producing beef cattle in China (ain't got no Black Angus over here!).

Plus, the Chinese method of cutting meat (apparently with a hammer) does not bode well for steak type cuts of beef. It's never trimmed, always has fat, tendons, gristle, and sometimes bone running right through the middle of any cut they make, and they leave the sinewy silver-skin on everything. You need to "modify" the meat if you're looking for steak type cuts. I normally just make pot roast with the beef...

Another tip though: The beef slices you can buy for hotpot make pretty damn good steak and cheese sandwiches if you have cheese and decent bread.

As for grocery stores in general, here's another tip: If you are ever looking for pet food (cat or dog, sometimes bird seed and fish/turtle food) look for the aisle that has the light bulbs and batteries in it. For some reason, these items are put in the same isle. Not exactly sure why, but it's been consistent everywhere I've been in China.

Nov 01, 2012 21:16 Report Abuse