FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Stuff

FOOD ON DRUNK - THE UPDOWNLEFTRIGHT SUPER MEGA STORE

On the linoleum floor near the entrance and beside the baskets was a large Tupperware container filled with water and little turtles. Live turtles. They were about the size of a book of matches.

The meat department was another marvel. It's totally open; nothing is packaged. I have no problem with this—I think the American practice of shrink-wrapping everything is wasteful and does nothing more than provide a false sense of sanitary safety. Of the wide array of choices, we decided we'd theoretically want to buy a black skin duck and some pig eyeballs, but where would we cook it? So we moved on to the packaged goods.

Advertisement

Just about anything you'd ever want comes in a package in China (except for meat)… and a lot of things you don't want come in packages in China as well. We wandered around marveling at stuff like "Chicken Ham Sausage!" and the "Hamburger choiceness raw material taste tempting!" and eventually gathered up a few items to make a small meal back in our room: a four-pack of thousand-year-old duck eggs as the appetizer; for the main course, a hamburger in a bag accompanied by a side of blueberry Pringles. We paired our meal with a delightful bottle of rice wine.

My eyes were watering and I needed something to wash out the taste. The only thing on hand was the rice wine. At least I think it was rice wine. There was no vague, exclamatory text on the bottle. All I know is that it cost just over one yuan, which is about 14 US cents. Chinese MD 20/20! I ripped the top off and took a swig. Whoa. The shit was like lighter fluid. Maybe it was? I'll never know. It was strong. I coughed, I gagged, my eyes teared up even more, and snot shot out of my nose. My insides were on fire. But I have to admit that it did pair perfectly with the bold flavors of the thousand-year-old egg. The wine's acidity captured the winds off the polluted Yangtze River and infused the wine with the cool tones of battery acid and old fish bait rotting in the sun at the end of a pier. A perfect compliment to the previous farty flavor.

While there were a number of flavors not usually associated with chips to choose from in the UPDOWNLEFTRIGHT SUPER MEGA STORE—shrimp, ox, tomato, panda—we decided that blueberry was the most retarded. Although they promised to be "Natural and Cool" (and I actually believed that they would), they turned out to be fake and disgusting. I expected them to taste like over-salted potato chips with a hint of blueberry flavoring but they turned out to be completely the opposite: a mouthful of chemical blueberry candy dust without even a hint of deep-fried potato. It was horrible. So naturally I turned to my old friend the 14-cent rice wine and took another slug. And that was it. My body had had enough of the UPDOWNLEFTRIGHT SUPER MEGA STORE, and I was promptly directed to the toilet where I barfed up, down, left, and right. DAVE CARNIE