Sure, I do all the time. Meat's like pussy, if it don't smell bad you can eat it.

Sometimes we get some meat from a friend of a friend of a friend whose family is farmers. The first couple of times I was a little torn by the fact that some dude has been sitting a couple of hours in a bus with the meat before it enters our fridge. 

Then at some point we got a bag of about 2kg of sweet potato from a highschool friend of my wife. This girl had carried sweetpotatoes for us across a couple of provinces... because they come from her familys farm and has been grown naturally.

Meat from the market, meat from the supermarket. Doesn't matter, the animals all come from small farmers that put them on a diet high on antibiotics, then they get butchered if they are lucky, or they get transported alive under horrible conditions, until they finally end on a dirty piece of cardboard on display for hundreds of nose picking hands to pick. 

Our local market has tastier pork than the supermarkets. The price is higher too and the dude selling it says the pigs are fed corn rather than garbage. 

Just cook your food properly to get rid of the bacteria it has picked up since the animal was killed, and hope that your constant supply of antibiotics leftovers will keep you healthy. 

EditHaving written all this, I bend down in the dust and refer to maRtIaNs more elegant and reader friendly way of answering this.

Yes I buy from the market and a butcher shop here in Chaoyang district. I ask my friend's advice since she knows whats better. Just have to be careful selective. I prefer meat from home. We kill our own farm animals and carve it up for rolada, kielbasa, but thats Poland. Here its the supermarket. 

Do not buy meat often though. Vegatables seem safer and easier to get here.

I am a vegetarian so this problem never arises.

Anyway, if I ever have to buy meat....

I was undecided for the 1st year I was here whether to buy from an unrefrigerated meat market that my great great grandmother would have probably been very comfortable in. But in the end I decided on buy meat from it - only during the very cold winter months where the flies don't cover the meat and the weather is colder than the temperature in my fridge.

yeah, but usually from supermarket just because I live next to one.  but I'm really just posting this because reading the other replies got me thinking about the markets in Mexico in the early 80's.   lol,,,  now that was getting back to nature.  amazing how fancy peoples requirements have become now.  cellophane, refrigeration, no flies, etc.

Mexico it was kinda the 'natural process'.  example `  the chicken u want to buy/cook/eat gets the Marie Antoinette treatment before your eyes.  and boy, to see all that meat sittin out in the heat and friggin covered in flies!  haha,,, well, that's just how it was.....

I "steer" clear of the open-air meat markets because 1) I'm not thrilled by the lack of hygiene, the flies, and all the handling, and 2) I never know where the meat comes from. So, I buy all my meat at Metro. Labeled source: Inner Mongolia. The beef tenderloin, T-bone, and leg of lamb rival anything I've had in the West.

No, I prefer, once a month to get naked, cover myself in blood, and walk into a nearby forest with only my pocket knife. I spend weeks, if necessary to make traps and follow game trails. And when, if, I return, with my bounty, I am... a man... covered in blood... that needs a shower.. before I go to my local market to buy my spices to make a lovely fragrant stew-a-la-rat..

I think it's not only the fact that the meat is spread out on a table and unrefrigerated that puts me off but also the fact that there doesn't seem to be anybody that qualifies as a butcher in China. Nobody seems to have any idea as to how to cut, slice and present the stuff. Okay, okay. That's the way we have it presented to us back home and maybe I shouldn't expect the same here. But surely the beef can be cut into steaks. The lamb can be cut into racks and legs and chops?! When I buy my meat I point to the drawing that hangs from the wall behind the counter showing a big moo cow and the way it should be cut. But the servers (not butchers) have no idea what I am on about.

My lack of steak problem has been solved by the arrival of Grand Farm steaks, vacuum packed and with an added pepper sauce sachet. Bloody delicious!

Vegetarian here, but spouse eats meat sometime. We don't trust the supermarket to have a rigorous process, nor the farm-factories. In markets, I never seen the meat refrigerated, even when the temperature is around 40c.  It smells quite nasty... but it's what we buy, for lack of other options >_<