Saturday wouldn’t be a Saturday without some shopping and it is no different here in Shenzhen. Pending the eventual move into our apartment we decided to buy some basic supplies at none other than Walmart. Yes there is Walmart in China and it has been here since 1996. Word on the street is that it’s pretty good but I have read a few articles that dispute this so we just decided to check it out for ourselves and form our own opinions.
Walmart is just a short, ten minute taxi ride from where we live and it costs us about $3.00CDN each way. That’s a real deal considering that in Calgary we are twenty minutes from the airport and it cost $35-$40 one way. Walmart is connected to yet another mall by an overhead walkway and from the walkway you can see what is going on in the plaza below.
Mall 
Exit from the mall to Walmart 
Walkway 
Different groups of ladies dancing in lovely costumes 
Aerobics
Upon entering Walmart you are greeted by Christmas music and decorations. Yes Diane Berge, Christmas is everywhere! The rest of the store is like our Canadian Walmarts but yet not. It is well laid out, clean, tidy and carries a LOT of stuff. The quality of the items carried is quite good and in some cases, better than what we get at home. There are many people in every department offering to help you and between our Microsoft translating app and hand gesturing we are able to find what we want. So check out what we saw…
So nothing unusual here. Just like any other Walmart you say? This is true until you decide you are done on this floor and are ready to go to the check-out downstairs. You access the lower floor by taking a flat escalator. As you go down the escalator the noise from the floor below gets louder and louder and louder. By the time you reach the lower floor, which is the grocery department, you can scarcely hear yourself think. It’s a very good thing that Dave is tall because he wove his way through the throng and I followed him. I stopped a few times to take a picture which probably wasn’t the best idea as I would lose him. But he is easy to see in a crowd and we eventually made it to the check- out line or should I say lines?
The pictures do not capture the sheer volume of people here, the noise or the aisle upon aisle of items. I’m pretty sure there was one whole side of one aisle just devoted to soy sauce. Needless to say though, we did enjoy our shopping trip to Walmart and we will be going back again but maybe not on a Saturday afternoon!
Dixie Goes to China 
Sounds like a fun day shopping and exploring
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Thanks for sharing, the pictures are great
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