Its head popped up through the bubbling water and a pair of eyes swivelled to
meet my gaze. I wanted to pat the turtle's head but I am not entirely sure
of the food hygiene rules in China. Welcome to supermarket shopping,
Chinese-style.
For the generations raised on food packaged in cardboard that looks like
cardboard and tastes like cardboard, with no added sugar, a Chinese
supermarket is a revelation of smell and colour. The Chinese are,
unfortunately, jumping on the processed food bandwagon, as the huge number
of fattie children walking the streets of Beijing amply demonstrates, but
mom clearly still knows to how to cook some traditional delicacies.
If you want a chicken here, there is no sign of Bernard Matthews, just a pile
of carcasses on a slab. This is shopping where you discover that animals
have heads and eyes and are not strange inanimate objects made in a food
factory
***
The smell is the first sign of what is to come. It greets you at the door,
intensifying as you climb onto the escalator to join the throng of people
doing their late-night shopping. It is the smell of dead meat.
The culture and the imagery is the same as any other supermarket in the world,
the signs and advertising instantly recognisable and the global brands, as
always, dominate. But that changes once you spot the sign that says simply:
"Butchery". Because this is where there is real food: pig's knuckles, duck
heads and claws in sauce, slabs of fatty offal that could have been pork, a
pig's head sliced in half. Even a dedicated carnivore needs a strong stomach
for this huge array of innards and the bits of animals that, in Britain at
least, we choose to pretend don't exist.
Walk further around the counters and there is the fish department and here in
Qingdao, fish is a speciality. We passed on what they called the "weever
fish in shape of squirrel" the other day at dinner, but here pescatorial
delights come on iced slabs looking as though they had just leapt from
Fushan Bay. There is another huge stainless steel tray, about a metre
square, piled half-a-metre high with tiny shrimp; shoppers simply grab a
giant handful, pop them into a bag and shuffle on. Then there are the huge
dustbins, brimming with white rice, the staple food here, of course, and the
principal backdrop for the panoply of fresh flavours.
***
One aisle along are the fish tanks, full of live fish that huddle together in
a corner as though the only thing going through their tiny minds are the
words, "chips" and "salt and vinegar". Simply pick up a net and scoop up the
ones you want before moving to the tank full of live clams, opening and
closing their shells and blowing tiny plumes of water, seemingly angry at
being snared.
***
And then, my meeting with Tommy the Turtle. Oh alright, very Disney, I know.
But try visualising taking the kids to the supermarket, fishing Tommy out of
his tank and then taking him home for a bit of disembowelling and head
chopping before adding carrots and celery. Not sure about that.
***
Unless he was washed down with some beer, perhaps. Such as Tsingtao, the
tipple of choice in many Chinese restaurants around Britain. Now, not a lot
of people know this, but Tsingtao is brewed here in Qingdao, home of the
Olympic Sailing Regatta. The brand name is simply a variant of Qingdao,
where German traders set up a brewery at the turn of the century so that
they could have a little taste of home.
In those days, Qingdao was little more than a fishing village and trading
centre but, my, how times have changed. One of the Team GB sailors summed it
up nicely when he was asked before the Olympics what the place was like:
"Oh, it's a fishing village with a population of about 7 million." And it
is, and now Tsingtao is China's biggest brewer and one of the country's
major exporters. So now you know.
***
Speaking of meat, though, it might interest you to know that Roger Federer has
garnered a nickname among the locals. They are calling him Nainia, or "Milk
Cow". To say the tennis star was bemused does not quite cover it, until he
was told that the Chinese were very impressed that he was given an 800 kilo
cow as a gift from his Swiss countrymen to celebrate his first Grand Slam
victory. Personally, I would rather have had a car.
***
And yet more on dead meat ... er, feet. Lin Dan, China's sporting glamour boy,
caused a stink when he won his badminton gold medal by throwing his trainers
into the crowd. Bizarrely, the Beijing Morning News reports that the lucky
recipients of the used footwear declared Lin's odour to be "sweet". They
need to get out more. Perhaps to a supermarket.
***
Don't you just know one of these stories is going to come along some time if
you are patient. Apparently, women's table tennis just hasn't been able to
attract spectators with half-empty stands for most matches. So, the answer
from the International Table Tennis Federation is obvious: get the players
to wear tighter shirts. Claude Bergeret, the Federation's vice-president, is
quoted as saying: "We are trying to push the players to use skirts and also
nicer shirts, not the shirts that are made for men, but ones with more
curves."
Brilliant. Now where can I buy a ticket? Front row, please.
