Shopping in Dengfeng...
I just love to go shopping in Dengfeng.
There's this one supermarket off of the main intersection in Dengfeng, that kind of resembles a small US supermarket. A little atypical of the usual small one room "they live in the back" storefront with an assortment of unidentifiable junk. This supermarket has aisles, and even has some degree of organization to it.
I had to buy soap.
Not just ordinary soap mind you, but this really neat smelling orange soap, that they make from god knows what. But the soap is orange in color, and smells orange in nature, and comes in a little orange see through plastic container. And, unlike most soap that you find in Chinese hotels, these thick little half dollar size white things that do a better job of slipping out of your hands then they do cleaning your armpits, this orange stuff does suds up quite a bit. Whether it cleans well or not is really not an issue to me. I just like the smell. I can stand in the shower, rub this stuff all over me, and just sniff. It's awesome stuff.
So off I went, to the Dengfeng supermarket, looking for two very essential items. Orange soap and chocolate muffins. The Chinese make these great little chocolate muffins, that come fresh in this sealed foil bag, with a little thing of something or other which absorbs moisture. Damn little muffins are so good and so fresh, that is, until you leave one on the desktop for a few hours or so. And the chocolate tastes fairly good too, quite the difference from the horrible chocolate taste of a few years ago. No, a few years ago, China and chocolate just did not mesh.
Finding the muffins was no problem. I've got that memorized fairly well. But, finding my favorite little bar of orange soap was going to be an issue. I can't remember where I got it the last time I was here; my journey to this super duper market to find orange soap was a new thing to me. I decided to look in the best section for soap that there was. In the bathroom section. I cruised up and down the aisles, drawing puzzling looks from every supermarket girl there was (they post one on each aisle section, to help the Chinese find what they're looking for, and to watch the big ugly Americans to make sure that they're not stealing shit). Eventually, I came upon the famed toilet tissue section.
Chinese toilet tissue is puzzling to me. The standard roll is slightly smaller in size than our much beloved American version, and the amount of sheets that they put on this roll is just slightly smaller than what you'd actually need after a good one. Especially if you ate corn the night before. But in the supermarkets, you can buy these rolls that are twice as long as the standard roll, something more on the order of paper towels. I think. Hell, maybe I'm using paper towels. But, no matter. Once I was in the toilet paper section, I knew I was close to my beloved orange soap. I started looking up and down the aisle for the famed little orange see through plastic container.
There was none to be found. But I did accomplish something; right next to the toilet paper were solid little paper enclosed parcels, the size of soap, with nothing but unintelligible Chinese writing on them. But no little orange see through plastic containers. I figured that the Chinese had eventually discovered the high cost of plastic containers, versus the much easier paper wrap. Besides, this was going to be easy. Finding my beloved orange soap by smelling was going to be easier now that the soap was wrapped in paper. One really had to sniff long and hard to get a whiff of that much loved orange smell, through the plastic container.
And off I went. Just started grabbing one little package after another, sniffing one here, sniffing another there. To speed things up, I stuck my head down by the shelf, and just sniffed, as I slowly walked up the aisle. And just when I thought I had smelled that beloved orange flavor, there was a noise behind me.
The noise was the usual Chinese "Hello". Some young guy, with his wife and kid, had been watching me as I sniffed the shelf of little packages. There was a smile on his face, and a look of curiosity on his wife's that I had found amusing. They were entertained by my apparent use of superior intelligence, to find my much beloved orange soap. They must have known that I couldn't possibly read the writing on the package exteriors. I said hello back.
They just stood there, just kind of looking at me.
Well, I'm not one for just wasting time staring at people, so I took the initiative. I grabbed one of the small packages, put it to my nose, and sniffed long and hard. Then, I handed it over to the young man, and gesturing appropriately, suggested that he take a good long and hard sniff too.
They didn't stay very long. They just walked away.
How rude. Didn't want to help me find my orange soap. I put the small package down back on the shelf, which, was a good thing, as the ever-present little Chinese girl super market attendant, who, had not been there previously, now made it obvious that she was watching me. Never had I seen a slanted eye turn so wide. She just stared. And stared.
I'm used to that I figured, these people always stare at me. But, I had no time for amusing her, so I continued back with my sniff patrol, from one shelf to the other, vowing to find my little bar of fragrant orange soap. Down and down I went, hunching over further and further, going from one low shelf to another, sniffing here and there, trying to find a whiff of that orange scent from all the other perfumed scents I was confronted with.
And that's when I noticed the picture on that one bag.
I was in the sanitary napkin section.
There's a lesson to be learned here, just as there's a lesson to be learned in everything that we do, every single day of our lives. And I learned a great lesson this very week, one which I will remember to the end of my days, and, if I'm fortunate enough, one which I will pass on to my children, and my children's children. It's something that I never ever realized, and something that I never ever would have figured. But, since the possibility of my having children draws ever so remote each year of my passing life, I'm going to pass this lesson on to you.
They don't make orange scented tampons in China.
Now, there's an idea. New, in the docstore....