Food Street Markets

  Dalian, China
Friday, January 18, 2008

Corner Fruits

 

Frozen stck food, Fried Stick Food

Food Markets
 
China is the world's largest producer of fruit and vegetables, amounting to an annual value of about 42 billion US dollars.  Fruit production covers 8.67 million hectares and delivers 62 million tons, accounting for 18 percent and 13 percent of the world's totals respectively.  Vegetable growing - 14.67 million hectares and 440 million tons, 35 percent and 66 percent - of which exported vegetables account for one third of the world's total.

Fruit Sidewalk

Fruit and vegetable production was one of the industries emphasized by the Chinese government as it retooled its economy In mid-1980s, and it has become a staple of the rural China economy. Markets and prices were liberalized into a capitalist format, with great success, astonishing really - today's production is 7.5 times the amount per person that it was 10 years ago.  It fits the Chinese agenda so well with high labor requirements and extensive distribution opportunities, both domestic and international.
 

Shell Fragments

China is also the largest producer of seafood in the world, with a 35% market share, in spite of a well publicized June 2007 US ban on several species due to their consistent contamination with illegal veterinary drugs and carcinogens.  The FDA banned 1 million pounds, a tiny portion of China's 51 million ton annual production.  
 

Shellfish 1

Seafood consumption in Asia is the highest in the world. Consumption in China has grown from 11.5kg per capita in 1990 to an average of 25.6kg per capita in 2006. Shrimp consumption has grown tenfold in the last decade as China has geared up to produce 41% of the world's supply.  Carp is China's fish staple, accounting for 72% of fresh water production.  All very upscale. 

China has also captured the fish processing market.  100 million pounds of Alaska's salmon harvest, for example, about 25% of the total, is imported to China, cleaned and processed, then shipped internationally.
 

Steamin' good bike food

Between 1996 and 2003, Chinese meat production rose by 51%. Pigs and poultry are the most popular, with increasing portions of beef and lamb. KFC likes China.
 

Street Level

China's agricultural production comes with some serious environmental consequences.  One report I saw estimated that 45% of all China's sewage goes untreated.  As industries gear up, and they certainly are, the problem grows.  The government has made clean industry a mandatory feature of the 5 year program (China's 11th since founding the People's Republic), and they are spending billions on environmental programs, but enforcement is a challenge.  For seafood alone, the country has more than 14 million fish farmers and thousands of seafood processors.  While regulation is stiff, including execution of serious violators, everyone acknowledges the size of the task.  Execution as in firing squad. 
 

Shuangxing market

In parallel with the rampant growth of food production in the past 20 years, China's consumers have been able to increase their domestic purchases.  But they like the old distribution methods.    Street markets are a way of life in all China's cities.  It's still common to see butchers on the street with live chickens, even pigs, that they will slaughter for you while you wait.  One friend noted that when he got home with his lamb chop, the blood was still warm and draining.  It's rather musical to walk down one of the "meat streets" in the morning and listen to the whack of butcher knives as a dozen meat handlers work their trade.
 

Perimeter action at Shuangxing market

In Dalian, research shows that only 22 percent of the population purchase fresh vegetables in supermarkets. They like to buy stuff directly from the farmers, visiting the street vendors 19 times a month on average.  The markets are lively, colorful, and abundant.  There are several huge markets, 500 or a thousand vendors, assembling daily to sell their carrots, cabbage, chicken, and corn.  Also neighborhood street markets in off-traffic curb locations and/or alleys with vendors carrying in their products in baskets on a stick over their back.  Little tiny ladies carrying a hundred pounds of oranges or onions.  And there are individual vendors who randomly park themselves on any selected street corner and sell what they got - nuts, raisins, apples, eel, sugar cane, ... Also mobile vendors who have all their goods on a bicycle.  Some days they are at the train station, other days they are in the park. 
 

Fruit Sidewalk

The large food markets, called wet markets, are usually on one floor, separated into sections for vegetables, fruits, meat and seafood.  The largest one is in a building that is probably 300 feet square, at least a regular city block, where most of the seafood sells, and in the mornings it spills out onto the parking lot with every other type of food, covering at least a couple of acres.  
 

Alley Vendors

The massive array of retail vendors is incredibly labor intensive.  There are no big truck delivery loading docks.  What trucks there are pull up in the street and make the best of the delivery, often several hundred feet away.  Most of the products are delivered either on motorcycle or bicycle trucks that probably have capacities of 500 pounds, although you can see overload of every consumer good on any street at almost any time.  Many of the motorcycle trucks are obviously direct from the farm, with hay and feathers in the spokes and mud covering the fenders.  All of this operation is non-mechanized, scaled down to human transport.  Fruit goes from field to bike to vendor to consumer, often without any 21st century support other than the roads.  It might take 4 people to make a complete cycle of an apple. Quite a contrast from western countries where 1 apple might use a gallon of fuel but the only significant person involved is the one who eats it. 
 

Alley Vendors

No cash registers, of course  They keep the money in a bag or shoe box at the stand, or in their pocket, or in a gourd mixed in with the peaches. I'd guess that well more than half the food sold never goes indoors until it gets home. These are the same markets that sell wholesale, with many of the delivery guys acting as purchasing agents for local restaurants or food processors.  They bring in the produce from the farm in the morning, then spend the day running deliveries around town.  Back home, of course, their wife or brother-in-law is preparing tomorrow's delivery.  The whole market scene is a great demonstration of how the economy takes advantage of the abundance of labor.  Or more accurately, the contrast with Western countries where labor is expensive and we use energy to replace manhours. 
 
From one summary:  "Sixty-percent of the fruit purchased in China is supplied by street vendors, in what is termed the "wet market." Similar to Europeans, the Chinese go to market nearly every day to replenish food supplies. Cultural buying habits don't require refrigeration for perishable goods and the economy does not support electrical demands most Westerners would expect. Products are lightweight, packaged in small quantities to transport on foot or by bicycle."
 

Fruit and blankets

The buildings and outdoor sheds are a fairly recent addition to the local market.  Dalian's large farmers' markets were ordered several years ago to construct overhead shelters to protect products and people from the elements, and to sell their produce in a more orderly fashion, regulation that has not gained favor in other Chinese cities.  Beijing thought their markets were too seedy and simply closed down many of them.  In a popular revolt, something the Chinese know about, the citizens demanded and received a concession from City Hall.  Not only did they put a stop to the shut downs, but now the markets and smaller vendors are getting free advertising from the local tourism department.  
 

Roasted Nuts

Strategists in China are have been busy analyzing the street markets, predicting timetables when corporate methods will overtake the traditional operations.  But I wouldn't bet on it.  The markets are too much fun, stimulating the entire lifecycle of the cities.  People love them,  buyers pushing and squeezing through the narrow lanes, vendors standing in 20 degree weather ready to help you pick out their best oranges, crowds buzzing with local vegetable news, and if there's a break in the action, they're over playing cards with the guy in the next booth.  Kind of like college.  There certainly are fundamental structural advantages to this kind of distribution in a place like China, but I think there is a also a basic human attraction in these markets for all the participants - community, enterprise, nourishment, purpose, competition - that makes them such great entertainment.