Zhoumo kuaile!

What's everyone up to this weekend?  I feel as if this is my first real weekend back considering I was knocked out by 8:00 p.m. both nights last weekend (so much for Jet Lag Rooster). We'll be hosting a friend who's in town (yay for business trips to China!), which means lots of eating and drinking (again).  

In the meantime, preparations for Chinese New Year (CNY) are under way. It's as if no one told shopkeepers here that Christmas is over -- lights are still up, decorations haven't been taken down, and sales are in full swing. Now among expats, "where are you going for CNY?" replaces "are you going home for the holidays?" Many of us are taking advantage of the week off to travel. With some friends, Mike and I will be venturing to... wait for it... South Korea! And for those of you who know Mike, yes, there is snowboarding in Korea. In fact, we'll be heading to the home of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Cool, huh? Much more to come on the trip. For now, I leave you with the image below taken at Carrefour this week. Apparently, CNY is celebrated with dried ducks (I think those are ducks). And lots of them.    

Adventures in Grocery Shopping

On our first weekend truly on our own, we ventured to Carrefour, an international hypermarket headquartered in France whose location here in Shanghai is about a 20-minute drive away from us. Hypermarket is a good term: it's gigantic; it's Target and Walgreens and Safeway in one. 

Besides reveling in the fact that we could find our favorites from home (there's a well-stocked imported/international section), we enjoyed discovering, or mostly observing from afar, the local fare.  

I'll let you guess the animal parts. 

There was also quite the sausage display. Note the "untouchability" sign at the bottom. 

Beyond the meat department, we loved the efforts of American brands to infiltrate the local market by appealing to consumer taste.   

Yes, we bought a pack. 

And let's not forget last weekend's orientation tour of Metro, China's Costco, where you can buy entire slabs of pork. Here's me grinning through the terror.

 

I paint a terrible picture. In all honesty, there are plenty of food options, both in grocery stores and at restaurants. We're not going to starve. In fact, we've eaten some pretty good meals, including decent nachos and a very respectable pizza.