Blogger Catherine Bodry lives in Seward, Alaska (do you miss your governor, Catherine?) and makes her living as a travel writer. On a recent trip to China she hit a piece of home: the Walmart. What followed is a something of a down-the-rabbit-hole ride.

From Gadling:

Faced with errands for unrelated items – body lotion, slippers, yogurt – I decided that today I needed some one-stop shopping. Visiting individual shops and bargaining down the price of each item would take me an afternoon.

So where do you head for one-stop shopping in Kunming, China? Wal-mart, of course.

The “supercenter” was pointed out to me earlier in the week by a local who, when I asked him about a sign reading “Kundu Night Market,” told me that the Wal-mart was the new market, and that Kundu was now just bars and discos. “But watch out for pickpockets at Wal-mart,” he added.

I didn’t feel good about it (though I joked to myself about “shopping locally” — hey, everything was made in China, right?), but I knew I couldn’t handle running around town in the cold, bargaining for a bottle of inexpensive lotion and pair of $1.25 slippers.

What ensued was an overstimulating experience that was probably far worse than bargaining away a chilly afternoon. Following are five observations I made on the differences between Wal-mart in China and the U.S., though I’m sure there are many more.

My favorite? No. 2, the salespeople.

Jeff Hess: Have Coffee Will Write.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 1055 by Jeff Hess and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.