How Traditional Markets Work in Mainland China
The other day, Clarissa Wei discussed how Traditional Markets work in Taiwan. How does that juxtapose with the mainland?
The other day Clarissa Wei penned an article on a particular passion of ours: “How Traditional Markets in Taiwan Work”. Well worth a read. In it, she offers one useful corrective – which we’ll get to in just a second. But before we get into it, I want to share a story real quick.
When the COVID pandemic first hit China, like much of the world, we faced grocery shortages in the initial crunch. Wet markets were shuttered across the country, and we had to rely on ordering delivery from supermarkets via app. It was this situation that led me to pen this post reflecting on cooking in the face of shortage (an admittedly whiskey-addled ramble which led to a bit of pity-coverage from NPR and the New Yorker before America got slammed themselves).
What that post is missing, however, is the epilogue of the story.
Because… one week after that? The markets re-opened.
Not in-person, at first. But the memory of the first market that hitting the delivery app – Huagai Market – is forever burned into my brain. In an instant, the shortages just… melted away: they had everything. They had fresh fruit, they had fresh vegetables – it was all there! No more frantically refreshing the app, no more clamoring over the final carrot. Like, for fuck’s sake, they even had whole fresh duck!
Even as the pandemic wore on in China, with some admittedly scary lockdowns which chased us down to Thailand for a spell, in Shunde at least – the markets always stayed open. So while my family in America were clamoring for their own carrots, for us, the supply chain was – while still not normal – stable.
I’ll spare you the economics lesson, which I’m admittedly a bit rusty on. But in short, traditional markets – places with a large number of buyers and sellers – are resilient in ways that large, corporate dominated supply chains are simply… not. In China, these food supply systems run in parallel:
There is a traditional supply chain that consists of many small participants (independent farmers, logistics companies, distributors, and vendors) that operate in state-provided infrastructure (market buildings, roads, etc).
There is a corporate supply chain with a few consolidated participants, runs on economies of scale, provides air-conditioned supermarkets, etc.
There is, however, overlap and interaction between these two systems. An obvious example is actually the example of Carrefour – if you go to one in China, you’ll be greeted with a meat section that offers a handful of different vendors, some of which provide specialty pork. And even as a lover of the wet market, I’d have to admit that Carrefour’s pork was quite good.
Further, there’s also the dynamic that Clarissa explains in her post:
There’s this perception that produce at the traditional markets is picked and shipped straight from local farms. And that every traditional market is a farmers’ market, sourced directly from small farms throughout the island.
Rarely is any of that true.
…the cabbage you might find at your quaint neighborhood wet market is actually from the same megafarm as the cabbage they sell at PXMart or Carrefour.
People like me and Steph (or even our buddy Adam) that defend wet markets in Asia are guilty of a sin. In the face of racist - or classist - attacks against the market, we often either explicitly say, or at least give people the impression, that “you know, it’s just like your local farmer’s market back home”.
It’s an undeniably effective line of argument. It also slightly misrepresents the truth, because the markets in China are not exactly the same as the farmers markets in the USA.
Because I’m not sure about you, but the farmer’s markets where I am in the USA tend to have explicit rules (or at least a cultural expectation) that the produce sold be grown by the vendor themselves. In pretty much all throughout Asia, there’s simply not that requirement. The produce could be grown themselves, or it could be purchased directly from a family farm, or it could be from the same mega-farm that Carrefour uses. The market is large enough for a… diversity of vendors.
So… where does the stuff actually come from?
Now, I want to be clear here: I personally do not know the market micro-structure of the wet markets in in Taipei. Clarissa could absolutely be 100% correct in her assessment that everything is from a megafarm or otherwise imported – after all, Taiwan is a pretty small island. We only know the situation in mainland China.
One of Steph’s friends is a market vendor at the Futian Market in Shenzhen. She specializes in produce that she ships in from Sichuan – we’d often use her for her potatoes. The way it will work is that, daily, farmers in Sichuan will sell either at or to a distribution center – something like this:
Now, there’s a lot of ways that stuff can be sold at the distribution center. Sometimes it will be from the farmers themselves, sometimes there’ll be larger distributors, sometimes smaller vendors, and sometimes one village will dedicate one or two people to the job. (it’s a large country)
Either way, Steph’s friend then has family up there in Sichuan that’ll go to the distribution center and make a large purchase (usually you need like a truck worth). She will then coordinate with logistics companies to truck the potatoes from Sichuan down to Shenzhen. She’ll then grab her shipment early in the morning in the Futian Market parking lot - a lively place at 4am! - and get her stuff ready for the day.
So like, no, she’s not a farmer. She’s also buying ‘wholesale’. But in contrast to food supply chains in the West which’re dominated by monopolistic competition… there’s no vertical integration here – it’s markets all the way down. The farmer purchases seeds from a competitive seed market and sells produce at competitive wholesale markets; the vendor purchases from competitive wholesale markets, has a wide choice of logistics providers (small, cheap low margin players that specialize in this sort of thing), and sells in a competitive retail market.
Of course, that’s just her. There are also those vendors that purchase from larger operations. For example, at the seafood market in Shunde, freshwater fish would usually be from local aquaculture operations, while the ocean fish was purchased via distributors. So while a consumer in Shunde would tend to be aware that the fresh water fish is a superior product to the ocean fish… sometimes you’re a YouTuber that’s making a Hong Kong curry fishball video, and you just need some mackerel. And that’s also there.
Which, I think, is a feature, not a bug. Something that always irks me is that while my parents in America have some fantastic farmers markets around them, they’re inconvenient as hell. Sometimes to make a singular meal I find myself having to stop by (1) a farmers market (2) an orchard (3) the supermarket (and because it’s Pennsylvania, a separate trip to the liquor store).
The beauty of a great wet market is that you can get all of that stuff in one place. Yes, you usually need to go before 10am (though many vendors also set up for a second 5pm-6:30pm rush). No, they’re not air-conditioned. And fair, if you’re not a vendor yourself it might get a little dicey to find convenient parking for your pickup truck – so you’ll need to walk, bike, use a motorcycle, or take public transportation.
Maybe you don’t want to do that every day, and I get that – I personally believe corporate supermarkets can also be a pillar of a healthy food ecosystem, too. But there’s a reason why – in China at least – old grandmothers and proprietors of small, family run restaurants consistently choose to shop at the wet market. It’s not a simple matter of cultural nostalgia: after all, you can also see a lineup of old people outside of Carrefours before they open in the morning too (again, Carrefour China does have some really nice pork). It’s because generally speaking? Wet markets have the best stuff, at the best price.
And if you love cooking, what better groups to follow than restaurant owners and old grandmothers?