Friday, August 28, 2009

The Right of Choices in Communistic China

I simply cannot imagine how Shanghai was like during those days of communism before the 1980s.

These days, Shanghai is like a mecca of consumerism.

Browsing through their supermarkets, we were mesmerized by the variety of choices that they have to offer. Singapore definitely pales in comparison in this aspect.

Drinks
While they do not have our tropical flavours, Shanghainese certainly have others to fill in the space. You can find a huge selection of bottled tea drinks that can be branched into milk tea, green tea, black tea, pu’er tea and oolong tea category. And the branches can be further classified into a range of flavours eg. For green tea alone, one can find choices among green tea with honey, jasmine green tea or lemon green tea. Not to mention the range of fruity drinks, yoghurt drinks and fruit juices to offer.

Chips
What is so surprising is that the food products that fall outside the typical Chinese dietary range can be found in a large variety of flavours. They seemed to have localized some imported food products like the potato chips. Apart from the boring salted chips, they have flavours like cucumber, lime, blueberry (yes, it’s blueberry, no doubt about it), kiwi fruit and lychee to tempt your tastebuds too.

C fell in love with a pomelo drink while I am still on the search for my favourite drink. There is just too much to try out. Potato chips of cucumber and lime flavours are currently on my list of favourites.