carrefouring

the arrival of the new year meant that it was time for me to move into my new apartment. although the apartment was furnished i needed to buy a great deal of household things like pillows, sheets, towels, plates, glasses, garbage cans, food, etc. fortunately, shanghai has a lot of choices for this kind of shopping and one of our office staff recommended that i head to the french supercenter, carrefour.

armed with a piece of paper with the carrefour wuning location written in chinese on it, i headed off to do some serious shopping.

after a bit of confusion on the taxi driver's part, i found carrefour wuning. it was an enormous windowless blue building with some banner advertisements outside and a lot of people milling around.

entering carrefour one stands on a multi-story escalator, slowly moving people past stores and advertisements describing carrefour, its products, how wonderful carrefour is, and so on. it reminded me a bit of disneyland as i rode the escalators up and up.

on a middle floor there was an information and returns desk. i decided to quickly ask what time the store opened and if they offered a delivery service. i waited in 'line' (actually a mass of people up against the desk) but it seemed like both information and returns were swamped with people returning items. hands would be thrust forward clutching receipts, and it seemed that those who shouted the loudest would be served first.

after several minutes it seemed like i was not getting anywhere at all. about that time a chinese man next to me began shouting very loudly. i turned to find out who was giving me partial hearing damage and saw that this guy was clearly pissed off. veins stood out in his neck and his eyed bulged as he shouted away. this tactic seemed to work, as he was serviced right away.

after having seen the operating hours on the wall (8:30am to 10pm) i gave up and decided that there was no delivery.

i rode the last escalator up and arrived at the true entrance on the top floor. it seems i was not alone in wanting to shop at carrefour that day as it was swarming with seemingly half the population of shanghai. i grabbed a shopping cart (fighting off a woman who wanted the same cart) and decided to walk the store in an organized manner, aisle by aisle and pick things out as i saw them.

i quickly found out that this would be impossible. there were people absolutely everywhere, rushing around, standing in the middle of an aisle, pushing past, or (as would happen a few times) staring at me.

first stop was the nearby electronics department, something i'm very familiar with. i found the ethernet cable i was looking for then went to look for a cheap dvd player. after a few seconds of pondering a cheap one stacked at the end of an aisle, a friendly saleswoman pointed me to where the rest of the dvd players were- a selection of about 20 or so.

she immediately pointed out the most expensive one, compete with dvd-r capability. i told her (in english, even though i knew she didn't understand) that i only needed something basic, with only an rca left and right audio output- nothing fancy.

a salesman arrived, speaking basic english- great! i settled on a dvd player and we changed the menus from chinese into english, which attracted a crowd of about 5 or 6 people. i asked if there was a delivery service. there was, he told me, and when i finished with my shopping i could go back and find him ('william') and he's arrange it all. perfect!

the sales areas were on two floors, the top floor focusing on housewares whereas the bottom floor was food. i managed to find many things i needed, but the towels will definitely need to be replaced as they are paper thin, and there wasn't much in the way of ceramic dinnerware.

there were people absolutely everywhere, and wherever they were they were in the process of moving somewhere else. maneuvering my heavily-laden shopping cart around felt like driving a 10-wheel trailer truck as other shopped crashed into me, bounced off me, and pushed my cart to one side. oddly enough, the worst offenders (including one guy who pushed my cart into a display, knocking the display over) were the red-shirted carrefour employees. to them, it seemed, us shoppers were nothing more than obstacles in their way of rushing around.

the hardware section was useful, as i found light bulbs, surge protectors, tape, a little toolkit, an emergency flashlight, batteries, and a thermometer all in the same area. i was in such a frenzy, grabbing so much stuff it reminded me of the south park wal-mart episode- everything was such a bargain, i had to have it all!

as i was shopping in the hardware aisle a chinese man took notice. he pointed at a pen knife, smiled, and said something in chinese. i told him, 'cheap', in english. it was, only 3rmb.

my cart was getting very full. the last thing i wanted to buy that day was a hat as it has been so cold in shanghai lately (see 'snow in shanghai') but i couldn't find anything. i located an important-looking woman wearing a carrefour badge and asked her where the hats were, using a putting-on-a-hat pantomime to get the meaning across. i was astounded when she replied in fluent english that i could find hats 'over there'. over where, i asked. over there in the appliance section, she replied.

i fought my way back against the flow of people to the appliance and electronics section but at first glance i couldn't see anything even remotely like a hat. i went up and down each aisle, using my heavy cart as a battering ram, to see if perhaps the hats were hidden in between a couple of refrigerators. no such luck, so i decided it was time to see william again.

returned back to the electronics section to find william and arrange for delivery. no william. no saleswoman who knows william. no other english speakers around. looked like it'd be a taxi full of shopping back to the apartment.

check-out was fairly uneventful, though it was absolutely the most amount of checkout counters i've ever seen in one place. a very helpful young woman started chatting with me. turns out she studied english at a local university and worked in carrefour part time. she complimented me on my eye color (not brown) and steered me to a faster checkout aisle.

that was my first of three trips to carrefour this weekend. i've learned that one has to be quite aggressive in these types of places lest one's shopping cart be appropriated, one be knocked over by an elbowing housewife, or one not get anywhere because of blocked aisles. thanks to a helpful taxi driver i've also learned the chinese for 'turn left', 'turn right' and 'go straight'.

am now preparing for today's adventure... the xiang yang market.