It wasn't so much the eating and shopping that I enjoyed--I kind of just liked getting lost in a landscape that was so different from the sea of Del Tacos and supermarket chains in the LA burbs.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Tumen 5 - No Vons (Tumen, China; 11/2008)
The North Market was a one-stop-shop for everything from fresh fish and vegetables to fly swatters, school supplies, and tailoring services. It was one big open rectangle, with vendor spilling into vendor. Butcher tables and seafood tanks stood in the center while vegetables, grains, beans, and other dry goods flanked the outer walls. Behind those walls, there were small eateries for dumplings and noodles. And those stood alongside hidden, often unmanned shops.
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the last sentence reminded me of a sort of related, but different thought, that i suppose you could file in the "emotional responses to supermarkets" category. every time i'm in an empty ralphs (or vons or pavilions or kroger), i get arrested by the shiny, pre-packaged overabundance we have in the US. i imagine what i would be feeling if i had come from some rural agrarian land and was seeing this for the first time. and it makes me want to cry. but, being a man, i can't. so instead i knock over a display case and grunt at the workers.
ReplyDeletehey, i was in tumen in 1998. weird. i never got to see the market there though. i remember it being hot and killing spiders the size of golf balls.
ReplyDeleteReally? What were you there for?
ReplyDeleteit was a mission trip. four of us were teaching english to a local high school. we lived in an apartment nearby. it was way rural.
ReplyDelete