More reasons to shop at Carrefour

Carrefour is a big presence in Shanghai. I think they arrived early in the 1990's as the first Western Supermarket, and although there are others now, Carrefour is still the biggest and best-known, so that was the first supermarket I tried. S had described it to me as a sort of Chinese Asda, but I think that was possibly stretching a point. It was certainly huge, over two floors, with household goods, sporting goods (including bikes), every electrical appliance imaginable and clothes on one floor, and then food on the other. Although parts of the non-food floor could possibly be compared to an oldish Asda, the food floor was something quite different. For a start off, although they sell 'Western' food, the British are of course a small minority in Shanghai - so the majority of the Western food is American and Australian. So I am faced with things such as Kraft Miracle Whip, Kellogg's Apple Jacks and Nescafe 1+2 Instant Coffee Bag. The words are English, but somehow don't seem join together in any sensible way. There is of course a bakery section. And a fish mongery. Except the fish aisle is more like the Pondlife section of a Garden Centre - the fish are all in tanks, swimming around, and you pick your own. You can also pick your own Frog (yes, frog, they are all there, jumping around). You can also pick your own Turtle, they are all there too, climbing slowly over each other, in a sort of pointless fashion. They do of course have things cut up and ready-packaged in trays and cling-film. I bought a pack of 3 'Chicken Chests' for 66p. And a pack of 4 bread buns for 6p. And a Betty Crocker's Hershey Chocolate Fudge Cake Mix for 95p (which came with directions for baking the cake if you were at a High Altitude). There was also a Hot Deli aisle - except where Tesco would have 50 chickens being cooked in a big glass oven thing, Carrefour had 50 Ducks instead.

Having said all this, I did manage to buy lots of things. I found Lurpak butter and Nescafe coffee and lots of bread and chicken burgers and and yoghurts and orange squash and biscuits - all the normal things that fill my trolley each week - and I even found frozen chips (although the instructions are in Chinese, so I don't even know if they're oven chips - I assume not). The queue at the checkout was about 5 people long. The time it took for me to arrive at the front of the queue was 25 minutes. This gave me plenty of time to read (and write down) the Carrefour Price Promise. "If you find same item located in 3km around Gubei store, selling less expensive in the condition, we will refund the five time difference price to you!". It also gave all the Chinese people around me (I saw one Westerner the whole time I was in the store) plenty of time to stare interestedly and unashamedly into my trolley. Reason no 54 - no need to furtively peek into other people's trolleys - just stare as much and as long as you like.