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| Customers queuing to buy egg tarts,a popular treat |
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| Steamed bao zi |
One of my true cultural experiences this year has been my
weekly or biweekly visit to the local market and shops in my neighborhood. My
local cai chang or market is located
underground on the corner of the streets Fujian Lu and Tielubiejie. Upstairs
and outside on the corner, life is a buzzing and bustling. Different kinds of
activity and traffic make up a hierarchy in this intersection. A homeless
couple sits silently and shamefully on the ground staring down at the sidewalk
and refusing to look up as they hold up a tin cup in which passerbys may throw
a few jiao or small amounts of paper
money. Typically an older couple, one maybe blind, performs sad mournful music
on the erhu, a traditional two-string
Chinese violin. Pedestrians saunter by and carry little children with split
pants or pampered and dressed up poodle dogs. Small crowds of people wait in
line on the sidewalk to buy Portuguese egg tarts, steamed boa zi (steamed buns filled with meat or vegetables or sweet bean
paste) or KFC style fried chicken. Bicyclists weave their way through the
obstacle course of pulled up cars and loitering pedestrians without being
knocked over by the stealthy, quiet and sneaking-up electric motorbikes. The
mopeds and electric motorbikes, usually carrying at least two people or a heavy
load of timber or twenty heavy boxes that are precariously strapped onto the
vehicle, have a special status in the intersection as they only stop briefly
for drop-offs or pick-ups or may not even stop at all. Mopeds and motorbikes
don’t have to actually stop at red traffic lights and the drivers are extremely
skilled at keeping one hand on the horn of their bike while the other hand
takes control of steering the vehicle ahead into the middle of the intersection
while also maneuvering it around pedestrians and larger vehicles coming from
all different directions. Taxis stop and go through the intersection as well,
although don’t count on ever getting a cab during the time you need one most.
The drivers will likely be switching shifts for a 2 hour time block from around
5:30 to 7:30 pm (or whenever they feel like it). The corner of Fujian Lu and
Tielubiejie, like many similar streets in this affluent part of China, has an
increasing number of private cars dotting the street, most of which are fairly
new and pricey. Black Buicks (which somehow have sold quite well here and some
wealthy Chinese might mistake them for German luxury cars), VW Passats, Audis
and BMWs with tinted windows outnumber the small Chinese hatchback QQ cars with
Hello Kitty or Snoopy stickers on them. Mien bao che- translated literally to “bread
vehicles” because of their shape’s resemblance to a loaf of bread, also fit
into this hierarchy. These vehicles typically are pretty banged up but are
practical, especially for the vendors in the market who may load up remaining
goods and boxes at the end of the day into the back end of the little vans. At
the top of the hierarchy of the intersection are public and private busses. The
bus I take from my campus to the campus where I work crosses and turns into the
intersection as well as various public busses that can be caught 100 meters
from the intersection. Within a moment, one can hop off the bus and be thrown
back into the chaos and hubbub of the world below on the street and be back
almost on the bottom of the hierarchy.
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| Fresh noodles and jiao zi wrappers |
Sometimes I stop by the market after work and make my way
through the crowds. When I enter into the front hallway of the market, I enter
into another world. Upstairs are various vendors squished into small spaces
selling prepared meats; fried flat bread and bing (a savory pancake); grains including different varieties of
rice and beans; as well as dried fruits, nuts and herbal teas. Sometimes I stop
by the woman selling the nuts and dried fruit to buy 10 quai (RMB) worth of raisins.
I’ve struggled in conversation before with this vendor and even attracted a
small crowd around who enjoyed the cheap thrill and entertainment of watching a
goofy and clumsy lao wai (a somewhat
crass but commonly used term for “foreigner”) woman pantomime her order of
raisins and walnuts. In the end, we all laugh and enjoy our moment of mutual
curiosity.
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| The precocious son of one of my vendors (2nd from left) with other kids. | | | |
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| My other favorite vegetable vendor peeling soy beans. |
At the end of the hallway are the steps leading down into
the market itself. I truly relish my trips to the market. Now that it is a warmer
season, a wider variety of vegetables are available which means I am not
required as often to make the long trek to the big Western style supermarket
located about a 15- minute walk away. I’ve enjoyed cooking and preparing dishes
recently where I can just run and get the ingredients I need from these produce
vendors. I have two different vendors I like to go to for my veggies. I don’t
go to these vendors because they have the best prices or the freshest selection
of organic grade vegetables (to be honest- I have no idea whether the veggies
are organic; whether the vendors are connected to the farm; nor whether the
produce has travelled from very far). Instead I go out of loyalty. I now have
some semblance of a friendly human connection with these vendors. The vendor in
the back doesn’t always have a wide selection of produce. She and her husband
work the table and depending on the time of day, their little energetic and
precocious son may also be behind the table. When I first started buying from
their table back in February, their son spotted me, looked up in amazement and
screamed, “Wai guo ren!! (Foreigner!), ” to which I pointed back to him in
cheekiness and said, “Zhong guo ren! (Chinese
person!!)” The connection I made over this silly little child brings me back to
their table every once in a while. I enjoy asking his mother where he is and practicing
my Chinese to just have small talk about family. I also take pleasure buying
veggies from a couple who are in their fifties or sixties. Always patient as I
pick up countless vegetables and ask “What’s this called? What about that?”,
they always respond back with the name (even if asked it the previous ten times
before). The husband always tries to appeal to me to buy some other vegetable
or cabbage that may be new for the season. Other customers may stop by and ask,
“Ni shi na guo ren? (Where are you
from?). Oh- America? Hen hao. Very
nice. What are you doing here? How long have you lived in China?”
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| Fresh eggs |
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| A fish monger |
For some reason, except for a small stand, fruit is not sold
in the market. Instead fruit sellers sell their goods on the street level in
separate shops. Down in the underground market, though, a shopper can buy a
wide range of meat and fish; spices; herbs; tofu and other staples common to
Chinese cooking. One fellow sells Chinese herbs and nuts necessary for Chinese
traditional medicine. A device on his table grinds up nuts or seeds into powder
or a pureed paste. A Chinese grandmother may lecture me on the health benefits
of the melon seeds I am buying. I take a stroll to another shop below and find
a place where in different open tubs on
a shelf are various cooking oils, pastes and pickled relishes such as pressed
sesame paste or oil; pickled white radish or green beans; or soybean paste. If I can’t find the ingredient while looking
in the maze of a Western style supermarket, I will find it for certain below in
the cai chang. Continuing on the outer
perimeter of the market, I come along to a back corner where during certain
times of day and I can see live ducks and chickens in cages that can be bought
and “prepared” right there to be taken home and cooked. Continuing along the
corner, both saltwater and freshwater fish and creepy crawlers are sold. Live
turtles as well as eels swim in shallow tubs waiting to be seized up by the
vendor to hand to a customer.
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| Friendly butchers who broke out into a chorus of "OKs!" |
Continuing along the outer perimeter of the market, I encounter
butchers and meat vendors. Unlike in Western supermarkets, the meat is not
packaged or frozen. The butchers likely get their meat fresh daily or perhaps
even twice or three times a day. No part of the animal will go to waste.
Different cuts of the meat can be bought and if chosen by the customer, can be sliced,
diced or ground. Like many of the vendors in the market, my meat vendors come
from humble backgrounds and are amicable Nanjing folks speaking with a thick
Nanjing drawl. Last week while making my order, I inserted unconsciously a few “OKs”
into my conversation. The vendors all around all broke out boisterously into a
chorus of “OK!!! OK!”
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| A quiet and tender moment in the market. |
From these trips to the market, I am always aware that I
stick out like a sore thumb. I know I’m the tall female lao wai customer of the market. But, as I continue to come back
time and time again, I have developed a sort of informal and basic friendly
rapport with some of the vendors. Although there may be some teasing going on
about my strange gait or my “OK!!’s”, I feel that these friendly and harmless jibes
are symbols of my acceptance into this
small world below. Some day when I leave Nanjing, I will miss this personal and
intimate experience and will have to accept shopping again at an impersonal,
sterile and largely-structured big-name supermarket.
