Saturday 17th October
Grocery Shopping in Beijing
Some things don’t change the world over. You have a day off, and you go grocery shopping to stock your fridge for the coming days. Everyone thinks that China is a cheap place to live. It certainly used to be, and in many cases it still is. Although my apartment isn’t ideal, I have nothing to complain about especially when it is ¥2,100 (£188) a month, exc bills. It’s big enough with an entrance hall and kitchen, bathroom and living rooms leading off this, then a balcony and bedroom leading off the living room, and includes most furniture and electronics. There are some anomalies, the lift stops working at midnight – I live on the 7th of 11 floors, and the fridge is in the living room, but that’s standard here. Also, the hot water pressure is questionable to say the least, but then it is so often in England as well. I am not sure about quarterly bills yet but you can get 2mb broadband for ¥150 (£13) a month, which I suppose isn’t so different from the UK prices.
But food is the big thing, isn’t it? Well that can be very expensive if you don’t have the taste for Chinese food, or the language to order in a small local cafe/restaurant. You can eat very well in Beijing with a huge selection of cuisine, not only from around China, but the rest of Asia and the world. Xingjiang lamb kebabs, Shaanxi noodles, Sichuan spices, Yunnan mushrooms, Beijing duck, Korean barbecues, Moroccan couscous, Vietnamese fusion, Thai curry, Japanese Yakitori, teppanyaki, sushi, Italian pizza, pasta, Belgian seafood, waffles, French pate, steaks, and more and roughly in that order of growing expense too.
My small kitchen has two gas hobs above a huge (rather old and dodgy looking) gas oven and you can buy imported Western goods in a number of shops (Jenny Lu’s, April Gourmet) and markets (ShunYuanLi Market) where you can find most things from Kellogg’s cornflakes, Japanese sushi ingredients, Thai lemon grass, Heinz baked beans, to Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Belgian beer, American pancake mix – yeah you get the idea. Of course these imported goods are all at inflated prices as you would expect, to account for the import duty, the relatively small supply and demand, the luxury nature of the goods and just getting it here in the first place. ¥240 (£22) a kilo for President French Brie, ¥9 (£0.80) for Heinz Baked Beans (made in Guangzhou). 10 packets of the US brand Springfield Instant Oats akin to oatsosimple for ¥45 (£4) but some amazing bargains such as a 35cl bottle of Leffe for ¥17 (£1.50). Of course the raw ingredients are cheaper than the pre-packaged items and you can buy a loin of pork, fresh vegetables, or sushi grade raw Japanese tuna all very economically.
I went to my local Jinkgelong for a basket of every day provisions and after living in various parts of the City over the years have come to realise how the stock, service, cleanliness in each of these outlets varies greatly. However you can always buy every day products with ease, but some stores have a wider selection of goods, for example in the Western enclaves their will be more fresh milk on the shelves and Pringle’s as well as Lay’s crisps. I’m in Tuanjeihu at the moment and the stores are quite small so there is not a huge selection available and annoyingly, foodstuffs are one side of the road, bathroom and dry goods are in a store opposite – so you need to queue up twice.
So I come to the point of this post – the cost of a shopping basket in Jinkgelong China compared to that in Sainsbury’s England. I bought 13 items, including eggs, bread, butter, crisps, ham, lettuce. The total price was ¥98.40 (£8.80) compared to a comparative shop online for £12.91. S0 there’s not much in it, especially when you consider some products aren’t the same. For example butter comes in smaller packs, bread comes in smaller loaves and at the same time quality does not always compare, the ham is very different, the salad not always as fresh and organic products are almost non-existent. You also need to take into account how the Chinese RMB is so strong against the British Pound these days. Here are the receipts from each store.
JINGKELONG
Pear Juice 1L – ¥11.50
Crisps Beef 45g – ¥2.90
Butter 140g – ¥11.90
Instant Noodles 120g – ¥3.45
Sprite 600ml – ¥2.40
Shopping bag 60*38cm – ¥0.30
Shineway Shanghui Supreme Ham 150g – ¥13.56
Bread 300g – ¥4.90
Eggs 732gXL12 – ¥18.50
Fresh Milk 500ml – ¥4.50
Lettuce loose – ¥5.29
Real Mayonniase 215ml – ¥8.00
Dairylea Cheese Spread – ¥11.20
TOTAL – ¥98.40
SAINSBURY’S
Apple Juice pressed 1L – £1.49
Walkers Crisps 34.5g – £0.40
Salted Butter 250g – £0.69
Instant Noodles 85g – £0.28
Sprite 500ml – £0.97
Cooked Ham 300g – £2.40
Kingsmill Bread 800g – £1.22
Freerange Eggs Mx12 – £2.64
Milk 568ml – £0.45
Lettuce – £0.49
Mayonnaise 200g – £0.99
Dairylea tub 200g – £1.11
TOTAL PRICE £12.91
I also went to Jenny Lou’s Grocery Store at Chaoyang Park, which seems to get bigger everytime you go in, with a sandwich counter, huge wine section, fresh deli and a DVD store hidden in the various alcoves. In this store you have to be careful with prices as they vary massively depending on where the item was sourced I presume, but a small shopping trolley can soon add up. The six items I bought cost ¥162.30 (£14.50) compared to a similar basked at Sainsbury’s online costing £7.83. This is roughly double and what makes it worse is that some packet sizes vary, for example I bought twice as many teabags in Sainsbury’s, more Jam and more Bran. Again, here are the receipts from each store.
JENNY LOU’S
Twinings Tea Peppermint 25 bags - ¥27.60
Heinz Baked Beans – ¥8.60
Springfield Oatmeal 10x39g assorted - ¥45
Sunny Select Raisin Bran 500g - ¥37.60
St Dalfour 4 Fruit Jam 170g – ¥16
Clovis Wholegrain Mustard 200g – ¥18.60
Shopping bag – ¥0.30
TOTAL PRICE – ¥162.30
SAINSBURY’S
Twinings Pure Peppermint 40 teabags – £1.79
Oat So Simple Original 12x27g – £1.98
Sultana Bran 750g – £1.61
St Dalfour Fruit Spread 284g – £1.38
Wholegrain mustard 210g – £0.59
Heinz Baked Beans 200g – £0.48
TOTAL PRICE – £7.83
Of course this doesn’t account for the average salary in each Country and the shop girls in Jenny Lou’s must have a double take every time an expat pays for his small bag of shopping with 100′s of RMB notes.
And other things are so much cheaper – a bus ride costs ¥0.40 (with an Oyster card), taxi flag fall is ¥10 for the first three kilos, a bottle of local beer is ¥15 and you can go to the cinema for ¥30.
