My Egalitarian Vegetable Lady
The lady who runs the little vegetable market where I buy the healthy part of my diet is hilarious. She rapidly talks to you, and then will turn around and wander off while still talking to you, but you’re never quite sure if she was talking to you to begin with.
First let’s clarify. This market where I buy my veggies is a hole in the wall along with a series of other hole in the wall random stores. The vegetables are all stored in bins or cardboard boxes and when it’s below freezing a dingy towel covers the leafy greens. You select your vegetables, put them in bags, she weighs them on a scale and tells you how much money it is.
There are no prices posted anywhere.
Though you can ask. How much is this per jin? (Jin = approx 500 grams)
So today I asked her about a bundle of asparagus. It was 18 yuan for a bundle of asparagus. I made a face and she laughed asking if I thought it was expensive. “It’s a little bit expensive, but I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Well I give everybody the same price here. Many markets give different prices to foreigners than to Chinese people. But NOT HERE! Here I give the same price to everybody. I don’t care where you are from.”
Halfway through talking to me she had transitioned to giving her attention to another Chinese woman, while I wandered off to eye the spinach.
She continued talking to the Chinese woman, “Once I had a black man come by, A BLACK MAN! and he said that he had paid 20 yuan for three bananas! Yeah, the lady who sells fruit out on the main road charged him 20 yuan for THREE BANANAS. Not me, I told him. I charge everybody the same.”
Interestingly, this story left quite the impression on her because she told it to Benji and I all the way back in September. She was quite justly scandalized by the highway robbery that was taking place out by the front gate. For reference, when I bought three LARGE bananas tonight, they cost me 4 yuan.
The fruit lady out front charged that poor black dude FIVE TIMES AS MUCH as what she probably should have charged him. For 20 yuan I can get a full meal plus rice OR a coffee. (Yes coffee is priced like liquid gold).
But my vegetable lady is right. The fruit lady out front does charge the living pants off you, which is why I vowed to stop buying fruit from her in November. Sadly it took me until November to realize just how badly I was being robbed. Though I never paid 20 yuan for three bananas. Six bananas….probably, but never three.
However, foreigners in China will often get the laowai price on many goods, whether at a small market or food stand or bargaining at the large fabric and fake goods markets. Chinese sellers see a foreign person and know two things. 1) that person is less familiar with valuation of goods in China and probably is unaware of just how badly they are being ripped off and 2) many foreign currencies are valued above the Chinese Yuan so the sellers feel justified in charging “rich foreign people” more. And sadly, black people in China are even more likely to get worse treatment than white people (for reasons somewhat unclear to me–> a more depressing conversation for another day.)
So kudos to my vegetable lady, who quite honestly charges me, Benji and the hypothetical black people the same price as Chinese people.
Ladies and Gentlemen, my vegetable and fruit haul for the night:
A head of broccoli, 3 bananas, a cluster of spinach, a hunk of ginger AND five carrots for my 180 lb rabbit named Benji.
All for 18.2 yuan or 2.78 US dollars.