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Q: Do you think food is generally cheap in China?
Meat on a stick can be. The last ones I bought tasted weird and gave me a sore stomach for months, thats why they were the last ones.
TedDBayer:
2 stick for 5 y, usually OK, that was muslim mystery sticks, probably rats.
Bravelife:
That is odd.I heard could be cat meat.Anyway I found it is less trustful to eat street food.I guess you got them on street.
But seems quite cheap though.
TedDBayer:
I would rather eat rat than cat, I own cats, meat was bitter, I threw them away, but still made me sick
Bravelife:
China does have got much cheap food,but I am so doubt about the quality.Even the eggs could be fake.
* Common vegetables, eggs, tofu, fruits and rice are cheap, even on a low income you can feed yourself with that. It's cheaper than many other countries in Asia.
* Processed food, like cookies and snacks can be cheap if it's local, but it's also mostly crap that is on the same level of the "budget" equivalent products back home, or worse. Imported processed food, is really expensive, more expensive than back home.
* Street food can be really cheap, but it's a lottery, you can get sick if you don't choose wisely.
* Local restaurant food can be cheap.
* Foreign restaurant food is always expensive, and not always good (ie. more a chinese interpretation of a dish than the actual dish, like chinese food back home).
* Meat, fish and canned food, can't tell, I don't eat that.
Eorthisio:
Well resumed, also imported groceries are extremely expensive, not because it cost a lot to import but because the Chinese government applies a 20% value added tax on most imports, including food. And there are foodstuff from back home that Chinese can't replicate, no matter how hard they try, it will never taste the same.
Bravelife:
I agree.I really think anything connected to local Chinese are usually cheap.Anything imported are usually expensive.My whole week costes on Chinese food could be =one dinner in western resturant.
That is comparing apples and oranges.
A piece of beef in China is either really crap or pretty expensive. A vegetable is either drenched in pesticides and fertilizer or pretty expensive.
You can always go to the back alley behind a restaurant and dig out leftovers for free, but paying more will get you better food.
Bravelife:
But the labor costes are even much cheaper in China.It still makes sense that food is China is generally cheaper in my persepectitive.
Scandinavian:
Production methods are antiquated, waste is huge. Labor costs are not the only factor. Mr Wang driving 5 heads of cabbage to the market on his scooter vs. a fuel efficient truck racing across Europe with cabbage. Wonder what labor costs per cabbage head is in that equation.
jetfire9000:
Actually beef in China is both expensive and crap. Buy it from the" fresh market " and take it home, the only real way to cook it to make it soft is pressure cooking or slow cooking for 6-7 hours. Restaurants bathe it in meat tenderizer just to make it soft.
Scandinavian:
very true, but it is possible to pick up some imported beef. I bought some steaks from Canada recently, they were excellent, but the price per kg was through the rood (and it is frozen and who knows how many times it's been thawed, coughed at and generally mistreated)
Eorthisio:
Carrefour, Metro, Lotus, Walmart, all have imported beef from Australia, the US or elsewhere, or you can buy some rock hard beef at the local street market, you get what you pay for.
Scandinavian:
here in town, if you want beef from one of the bigger supermarket chains, then it sure ain't Carrefour or Walmart (we don't the others) Vanguard have decent beef. The place I get beef has the 5 star hotels and steak restaurants as customers.
The supermarkets in China do not source their products centrally. So what one Carrefour has is not the same as what another has
jetfire9000:
Indeed you do get what you pay for. You can pay double or triple the price for normal quality beef and cheese from back home, or you can buy rock hard beef locally.
Or you can do like me and just not eat beef. I'm here on a student visa, so my earnings come from private tutoring which does in fact cover groceries. But , anyway, I prefer to put some of that aside instead.
Eating chicken everyday for twice the American price is more manageable.
Highly dependent on the city.
Greeneries and fruits :
- Usually cheap for an acceptable quality if you buy local. And by local, I mean province-wide. No guarantee against GMOs or pesticides. Whatever is written on the packaging means nothing.
- A bit pricier if you go a bit farther, with a major decrease in quality. Made in China cherries, lemons, apricots, strawberries have no taste whatsoever, unless you just live wherever they are produced. No guarantee against GMOs or pesticides. Whatever is written on the packaging means nothing.
Prices can highly vary according to the place you buy those : supermarket or smelly local market.
Processed food :
Cheap for the local brands + international brands like Nestle, Unilever and else, but you get what you pay for (which means sugar, palm oil, more sugar, monosodium glutamate).
Soft drinks :
Cheap, but you get what you pay for (which means, water, sugar and citric acid). 100% concentrated juice is hard to come by. Imported juice is expensive (count 20 RMB for real orange juice from Thailand or Australia).
Dairy & Cheese :
Local products are a joke.
Imported products are on a R visa and are getting cheaper by the months.
Meat :
In the markets/supermarkets : overpriced, 50% garbage stuff of unsure origin randomly cut, 50% syringed water. And that's already high end, the rest is for the restaurants and processing factories.
In high end supermarkets : acceptable meat, insanely overpriced.
Your only hope ? Imported meat or tofu.
I manage to eat mostly imported stuff for a price that's not so far from what I had back home by buying large quantities on the Internet. And I cook everything from scratch too, including bread and cheese. And I grow as much as I can of my own spices. Time consuming, but I never get sick and I have a much better digestion since I took this resolution.
Word 'food' is singular
as an 'uncountable noun'.
icnif77:
'Blank' is necessary always after the full stop. Even when typing on 'IJobs'.
icnif77:
I cook myself, and I never look how much I spend for food.
I got yesterday 1/2 kg of beef steak for less than 40 Rmb. Similar beef in West goes for 300 Rmb at least.
Mateusz:
"Food" can also be countable, when used to describe a category (different types of foods).
icnif77:
@Mat: 'they 'killing' me with downs
.
I might be wrong! How do you say: 'one food' as 'one meal'? '2 kind of (different) foods'.
OP edited after my bell! It was '...…food are…..' before edit.
Yes!. Bread, milk, eggs, butter and the usual vegetables, coffee are all becoming expensive, if not more than it would cost in Europe ,and 5hite quality . Bread is a rip-off 5-6 slices for anything between 10-14 rmb and it taste like a sponge, Patisseries are most certainly overpriced. My personal view is that China is becoming over priced in consumables and clothing products. You can get items at a good price if your not being ripped off, how these are the items that you would not purchase regularly. Very little is cheap in China, is my view.
Scandinavian:
an oven and a big bag of flour is the only way to have bread in China. and every single Chinese person who've tasted my bread has munched down several pieces while praising it and suggesting I open a bakery.
For the quality you get, is stupidly overpriced.
expatlife26:
I agree, not much value. If americans were interested in oily rice with a couple low grade meat and veggie scraps I doubt it would cost more than $1.50 there either.
It's inexpensive but its really low quality.
Cheap to me would mean that you could get a nice salmon dish or a steak for 10 bucks.
But no...nice things are far more expensive than we're used to.
China has cheap food. A lot of cheap food. Not only is it cheap, it is usually quite delicious.
Cheap if you are talking about crap quality food. If you want food as good as the American standard, then you need to pay more than what Americans pay in the US.
andy74rc:
There's lot of places in the world where you can do that. Possibly without worrying too much about the pollutants in the soil/water.
