AUCHAN Super Market (歐 尚超 市)
AUCHAN is a French based supermarket which as in my opinion made an inroad in the huge Chinese domestic market, together with WALMART and many others, in order to satisfy the insatiable demand from urban dwellers, tourists from out of town, or just curious visitors like myself.
The market occupies a huge part of the second floor, with parking spaces on the ground floor, and part of the second floor. You pay for parking on the way out, about five dollars (RMB)
Interior layout is much the same with any other international supermarkets, with escalators rather than elevators for vertical transport. Selections in there are plentiful and amazing, prices after converted back to CDN are very reasonable.
Shoppers are surprisingly relaxed as compared to moments ago when we tried to enter the parking floor, we want to make a left into the building, it seemed that the whole world wants to go somewhere and there was not a single car from other side of the road which would stop and let you turning left.
You literally had to barge onto the other side inch by inch, until there was not enough safety space for the oncoming traffic which always try to sneak around (inches from) you. Then they stopped, and you quickly make you “left” turn. All the while there was no eye contact, or at least from my untrained eyes.
Drivers here have either got used to their driving culture or are numbed to the mutual aggressiveness of road behaviors; wonton disregards of the safety concerns of others.
I recalled an incident on BC’s highway 99, where cops stopped ten high end sports car drag racing along the road, well, guess who were those aggressive young drivers?
This city is a fair size city, and it is a sprawling city, as much as I complain about the traffic, the road behaviors, once the peak hours is over, it is bearable on the road. However, to find a parking spot for your vehicle after you get home would be another matter, because of the sheer volume of car owners, any side street are often filled with parked cars on either side for the night, with very little space left for pedestrians, and any other city functions like garbage collections, the neighborhood collects garbage daily.
Garbage trucks are at work at five in the morning, because after six in the morning it is next to impossible to move that big truck around with other vehicles competing for road space.
Later