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America is notorious around the world for being a consumerist society, driven by whim and novelty, with an unsustainable dependence on frivolous spending. So what's it like in the People's Republic of China, a nation founded on a commitment to the "communal control of society towards the common benefits of all members"? About the same.
When I ask my students if they have any hobbies, at least half of them answer, yes, they like to go shopping. Ask them what they did over the weekend, or last night, or what they plan to do after class, and most of them will simply say, "Shopping." Walking the streets of downtown Kunming, you don't see office buildings, or museums, or libraries, or even public parks. What you see are clothing stores, appliance stores, shoe stores, music stores, food stores and restaurants.
The urge to spend may have been beaten into submission for the first few decades of the Chinese communist state, but in the last twenty years, it has reemerged with a vengance. China may not be as socialist as it once was, but it is still extremely sociable, and shopping is one aspect of people's desire to rub shoulders.
Another aspect is bargaining. Buying anything from vegetables to a refrigerator demands more than just plopping down your bank card or cash. You and the seller first need to agree on a price. Most markets and shops in China have no marked prices. God help you if you don't have some idea what a thing is worth, because the price you get quoted can be orders of magnitude greater than the value. Even when prices are marked, the sticker is often only the starting point for negotiations. My students tell me that you should pay no more than a third of any posted price.
China wasn't always like this. Twenty years ago, everything was labeled with a standard card, showing the official price certified by the city government. Not only was there no bargaining, there was no point in comparing prices between stores, because every store sold the same goods at the same prices. And there wasn't a lot to choose from. The Shanghai Number 1 Department Store sold stuff like needles and thread, tiny mirrors and combs, quilts, replacement coils for electric heaters, and thermos bottles. The Number 2 and Number 3 Department Stores sold the same items, and that was about it.
Those businesses are long gone in a sophisticated city like Shanghai. As recently as three years ago, you could still find old department stores in Kunming, but now even in this backwater all of them have disappeared. Today there are so many shopping opportunities, merchants need to resort to gimmicks to get you into their shops. Clothing stores have their employees standing out in front, rhythmically clapping their hands, entreating you to march in to the beat. Wedding planners stage fashion shows, with a succession of models parading and preening down the sidewalk in white, pastel, and crimson gowns.
The latest shopping palaces in Kunming are the superstores. The first to arrive was Wal-Mart, which is affiliated with the American empire, but which here sells a more Chinese mix of products. I don't think the US chain carries gift-boxed jars of black chicken essence, or live frogs and turtles, at least not in the food department. Wal-Mart was followed by N-Mart, TrustMart, PriceSmart and the iconoclastically named Carrefour. Typically, these stores have three of four stories of shopping, free bicycle parking, and shuttle bus service from neighboring residential areas.
The superstores regularly put on big product promotion spectacles. They set up a stage out front, with balloons, a heavily-amplified MC talking non-stop, and several dancing girls. The products for sale can be almost anything: bottled water, candy bars, laundry detergent, things that nobody even saw a few years ago, but which now signify Modern Living.
These shows always attracts a big crowd. The MC drags people out of the audience to participate in the performance; in exchange they get a free sample. Sometimes, I can't even tell what they're selling, but the excitement is infectious. I was once tempted to join in, until Deb pointed out to me that the product being promoted was sanitary napkins.
Unlike in the US, the superstores haven't generated any resentment among either shoppers or merchants. The majority of stores are still mom and pop businesses and they don't seem to have suffered from the competition. The style of shopping in the superstores is so different, it may not suit everyone. For one thing, there's no bargaining. For another, you don't get the level of attention that you find in smaller stores.
When Deb and I bought an electric iron in an old fashioned store, the salesclerk plugged it in to prove that it heated up. It never occurred to us that it might not, but since returning defective products can't be taken for granted, it wasn't a bad precaution. Even when we buy something as simple as a lightbulb, our neighborhood shopkeeper makes sure that it works. They don't do that at Wal-Mart.
People still recognize the value of small-scale, intimate business relationships. As much as possible, people buy their food fresh in a local market, usually every day. This is why most families can get by with refrigerators that look sized for a college dormitory. When fresh meats and vegetables are available a few steps outside your door - all day, every day - why stock up?
Once while I was getting a haircut, a old farmer walked by the barbershop. She was carrying fresh greens in a pair of baskets hung from a shoulder pole. When my barber saw her she instantly dropped her scissors and rushed out to street. The two women squatted down on the sidewalk and negotiated for greens so bright and fresh they almost glowed. After my haircut, the old woman was still tottering down the street, drawing out shopkeepers like the pied piper.
Some of our friends tell us that we should not buy our produce on the street or even in outdoor markets. Better to buy it in the supermarkets, where it comes wrapped in plastic, pre-weighed and priced. But this advice is an example of do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do, because our friends, like all people here, are crazy for fresh foods. Catching sight of farmers in the city, dressed in tattered blue peasant outfits and cloth shoes, signals "Fresh Food" more effectively and more persuasively than a flashing neon sign.
Generally, even though the food is better in the country, the markets are better in the city. In Chinese, the word for "city" is actually the same as the word for "market." Cities are where you'll find enough people to keep a market busy every day. In the countryside they make up for this by having big markets weekly, monthly, or in some cases, yearly.
When a market comes around only once a year, you can be sure that it's sensational. We were recently in a town that was having its annual horse supplies and traditional medicines market. Thousands of people from around the province flooded the streets for the week-long event. Vendors took over, doing business from small shops, temporary booths, and blankets set down on the ground. It was more like a county fair than a shopping mall; hawkers milled through the crowd selling trinkets, families snacked at roving push carts. There was even a sideshow, promoted with live snakes and pictures of Girls! Girls! Girls!
This would have been a great place to buy antelope horns, tiger's paw, the gall bladders of wild boars, or monkey brains. But most shoppers were ignoring these exotic wares and flocking to stalls selling the kinds of things we see every day in Wal-Mart: bottled water, candy bars, laundry detergent, and yes, sanitary napkins. At first I couldn't understand their attraction to items that can be found in any supermarket in town, until I realized that where they lived, there aren't any supermarkets in town.
I guess it's only fair. Just as city people like to buy country goods, country people like to buy city goods. But I think they were missing out on some great prices for monkey brains.
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