Walmart Nanchang Style

With a market of four million people, it’s not surprising that Walmart is in Nanchang. Think of all those people needing Every Day Low Prices and Great Value products!

On Monday afternoon, Evelyn and Karen herded us all onto the bus, babies in our arms or in baby slings, and drove us to Walmart for supplies. They told us that we planned to hit two sections of the store. We would first go to the baby section to buy diapers (now that we knew the right size to buy) and the snack and water section. We Americans find it difficult to go very long without our junk food, plus we were all extremely thirsty. You don’t realize how much water you drink until you are told that you can’t drink the local water.

We all thought it odd that the reps would emphasize that we would only go to two sections, and that we would go as a group. After all, we were Walmart experts. We could all probably take an empty store and tell you exactly where everything should be stocked.
We soon understood.

The Walmart in Nanchang did not even remotely resemble the blue and gray, wide-aisled stores that we love at home. We pulled up to a 5-story building with red Chinese symbols over the entrance. The symbols looked like they were trying to say “Walmart”, but I think they really said “Foolish Americans Enter Here”.

This was a Monday afternoon. Not a holiday or special sale day. Nothing about the day was special at all. But, imagine the busiest Christmas shopping day you’ve ever seen and then triple the number of people. We now knew why Evelyn and Karen wanted us to stay together. If we were separated, we would wander around until another Chinese emperor came into power.

We entered the building and immediately merged into a stream of about 50,000 people. We took two escalators (or maybe the crowd just pushed us slower Americans up the stairs), and emerged onto the third floor. We found small shopping carts with strange wheels that would roll in any direction. If you wanted your cart to go diagonally across the aisle, then you were in business.

The small carts made sense to us since we had been told that the Chinese usually only buy what they can carry in their arms. The multi-directional wheels did not make sense until we hit the sales floor. Then, we discovered that the bumper-car like atmosphere made the carts absolutely necessary. If you couldn’t drive straight down an aisle, then just ricochet off the others and you’ll reach your destination. Genius, Sam Walton!
The aisles were tight, jammed, and overstocked. The noise was deafening. Everyone…EVERYONE bumped into everyone else.

But, I must point out that the Chinese are all extremely polite. They don’t elbow each other to get to the jumbo bags of cheese popcorn, and they don’t glare at the people standing in their way in the greeting card aisle. They know they don’t have any personal space, and they’re okay with it. They know that their ricochet carts will eventually bring them to the items they’re looking for, so they are patient - persistent, but patient.

We ricocheted around and found all the baby things we needed, and then headed to the water and snack section. Logan was joyful at finding the Pringles, but dismayed when he realized that the flavors were “Seaweed”, “Shrimp”, or “Burnt Meat”. Burnt Meat? We didn’t understand that one, either.

By this point, Sandy’s eyes were getting really big (a sign that she’s getting stressed), and Logan looked ready to take a crop duster back to the U. S., so we quickly loaded our cart with all the water we could carry and headed to the checkout.

There were at least 60 checkout stands going full blast and with shoppers 7 or 8 deep. There could have been more checkouts, but I didn’t have my binoculars with me. Our purchases totaled 447 Yuan’s (about $60), so I paid with a bunch of Chairman Mao’s bills, and we joined the escalator mob to the bottom floor.

We fled to our bus, and were silent on the way back to the hotel. Walmart Nanchang Style had exhausted us.