The Free Market Sucker-Punch

It was a game that I had played many times since moving to Beijing, and one that I knew would be played out again today.  The aim of the game for me seems simple – track down a particular recipe ingredient that, while not part of the usual Chinese fare, isn't exactly a rarity in most supermarkets in the west.  My opponent was none other than the Beijing food market – a crafty foe who has taken down many past contenders simply by wearing them down and forcing them to throw the towel in through sheer exhaustion.  In the war of attrition that is western grocery shopping in modern Beijing, the need to visit 4 or 5 different supermarkets to get a list of 10 ingredients is a well-known pain in the arse (whereas you can probably buy a 10kg of MSG from your tailor).  Adding to this is the unstable nature of the local western supermarket supply lines – just because you saw a shop selling something last week, doesn’t mean they are going to be selling it next week.  In a model reminiscent of “whatever falls off the back of the truck”, it’s less menu planning and more pot luck.

The foodstuff Quidditch snitch I was chasing this time around were a couple of smoked trout.  In Oz we don’t need to go too far to find these – Australian’s uptake of these ‘gourmet foods’ that go well with wine ensure that sellers are a dime a dozen at the local Canberra plaza.  BUT transfer this to Beijing, where smoked trout is but one of many supposed foreign foods vying for shelf space in shops wanting to cater to all expats, and it was always going to be a hard slog to source.  So with the list of all local foreign shops in my mind and a route marked out with the precision of a mountain biking rogaine race plan I headed off to my first (and hopefully last) stop – a local market with a few foreign food stands and seafood mongers. After coming up empty handed at the deli I bit the bullet and approached one fish store to ask if they had trout, only to have the store owner grab his net and pull out a 3kg live version from a filthy fish tank behind him.  It was about as fresh as I was going to get (notwithstanding the opaque colour of the water), but the only smoke that this fella was getting was from the cigarette still hanging out of the store owner’s mouth.

So t'was back on the bike, and off to the supermarket below our old apartment block where I found smoked salmon, smoked spiced mackerel fillets, smoked cheese, smoked tofu and lots of Chinese smokes but not smoked rainbow. Ahh, fuck it!  The smoked herring fillets that Amy had bought yesterday as an ingredient backstop were looking inviting, especially as the afternoon wore on and the temperature headed back down to the minuses.

BUT NO GODDAMIT!  Beijing’s painfully dispersed, inefficient and hark-back-to-the-pre-open-door-policy-shopping-experience (where ex-pats could only get foreign goods at the Government-run ‘Friendship Store’, which was incidentally closed to Chinese nationals) was NOT going to get the better of me.  And as luck (or determination) would have it - HURRAH!  My next stop on my shopping tour of Chaoyang District hit pay-dirt, as (and I say this in my best David Attenborough voice) "I spotted the rare smoked trout in its natural habitat - a cold display cabinet".  I was bathing in retail success – the glory of having beaten the odds and finding all groceries I needed rather than waving the white flag and settling for Holy Mackerel (or take-away) instead.  2hrs for two smoked trout.

But like many times before when I’ve played this game I took my eye off my opponent lying on the canvas, thinking that the knockout was in the bag.  And again, one last dash of determination from my opponent and I was face-to-face with her sucker punch of exorbitant prices that left a sour taste in my mouth as bitter as any blood from a real last minute connecting uppercut (AU$45 for two trout – WTF?).  It’s that snide remark from a losing opposition that spoils your celebration.  It’s the painful leg sweep (which although illegal and caused his opponent to be disqualified) that put The Karate Kid out of finals contention in the All-Valley Karate Championships, even though he went on to win.   It’s one annoying part of Beijing I won’t miss.