MY LOCAL MARKET

My local wet market

I love shopping at my local market. It is a busy noisy place and full of friendly people. On several occasions  people have come to my rescue with iphone translation apps to help me but what I want.

As I am a frequent visitor the stall holders now know me and are extremely helpful, even helping me with what little Chinese I have picked up so far. There are always smiling faces welcoming me.

The produce is fresh and plentiful, and full of stuff I have never seen before, or certainly never used. So I am enhancing my cooking skills trying out new things. One thing is that the produce doesn't stay fresh too long, but for me that means it's not full of artificial things helping it to last for ever, which can't be a bad thing.

 Also I like shopping on a daily basis choosing what's fresh that day and working my meals around it. This is how people used to shop. Luckily I have the time to do this and I appreciate this is not an option for everyone, but I am enjoying it while I can.

My fruit seller

Shopping here lets me see a bit of local life in China, away from the ex pat bubble that one can often find themselves in. Although we do some of the ex pat stuff we also love to see how the local people live and often find ourselves wandering down alleys and backstreets. It always feels safe, we have never felt threatened, and we are careful. People do stare, not too many blondes wandering around these areas, but they are always polite, and usually more than willing to let me take photographs, and on more than one occasion have had my photograph taken by them.

Lunch time at the market.

Selection of fish on sale

So as you can probably tell I am having a lot of fun shopping here. I even get free stuff! I now have so much ginger in my freezer I don't know that I'll ever use it all up. Can you believe when I went on Saturday to buy chillies, quite a bag of them they wouldn't charge me anything. Can't ever see that happening at home. I will repay them will treats from my kitchen, not sure how that will go down, but I will try. Little jars of chilli sauce perhaps.

So combined with the supermarkets here, I couldn't do all my shopping in the market, I am able to find almost everything I want. Buying anything brought in from outside of China is very expensive, but we do need a little bit of "home" from time to time so if a box of weetabix in the cupboard satisfies that need then the cost doesn't really matter.