The Wonders of Chinese Toothpaste and Bread

There are two places I do most of my grocery shopping here in GZ.  One is the wet market a five minute walk from our apartment where you can buy practically anything you want, from tiger claws and to the more mundane fresh fruit and vegetables.  It’s kind of romantic to wake up in the morning and throw on some shorts and a t-shirt and head to the market to pick up some fresh fruit for breakfast or to plan dinner for the evening and head out to the market to get fresh vegetables, noodles, and tofu.  However, sometimes it’s more convenient to just stop by the Carrefour after the gym and do all of my grocery shopping on the way home.  Carrefour is a French supermarket chain with stores all over the world, including a store below my gym in Jiangnanxi (江南西).  If you go to the store on a weekend, it’s sheer madness.  People wander around the store without any regard for other people.  Old ladies zoom down the middle of aisles paying little attention to the fact that someone may be walking towards them.  It’s enough to make me mutter “Jesus” under my breath, and occasionally something harsher.  But the store has everything you could imagine.  It’s two floors.  The first floor has all of the fresh food, including meat, fruits, vegetables, bulk foods, the bakery, prepared Chinese food including dim sum, noodles, various dumplings (饺子), buns (包子), dairy products, seafood, Chinese spices, sauces, and oils, and various beverages.  The second floor includes housewares, imported foods like granola and coffee, books, household applicances, electronics, health and beauty products, sporting gear, and wine.  It’s good things are organized by departments because there are no real signs indicating what is down each aisle.  If you’re looking for something specific, it becomes something resembling that old game show Supermarket Sweep where contestants run up and down aisles trying to find specific products. 

One of the more typical Chinese products is a toothpast brand called Darlie, which is one of the top -selling brands in the country.  Before the company was sold to Colgate-Palmolive in 1985, in English the brand was called Darkie and featured a somewhat racist and stereotypcial picture of a wide-eyed, smiling black man in a top hat that was supposed to have been inspired by an Al Jolson performance.  Colgate wisely decided to change the name in English-speaking markets to “Darlie” and come up with a less steretypical image for the package, but in China the brand is still called “heiren yagao” (黑人牙膏), which means black people toothpaste in Chinese.  Heiren (黑人) or black people does not have a negative connotation in China, but instead is used to refer to people of African descent.  It’s slightly jarring to walk through the health & beauty section to be greeted by a large display of Darlie toothpaste with this image of a black man in a top hot smiling at you, something that would never fly in the States. 

 

The new and improved Darlie

But my favorite section of the Carrefour is the bakery with signs advertising all of the store’s freshly baked bread products, including the Russia Bread full of 100% Russian smack goodness and Big Nutlet Bread with lots of tasty nutlets.

Russia Bread, full of smack

Big Nutlet Bread, the name says it better than I can

Onion Brawn Bread does a body right

Italy Bread really is the best for being sandwich