How the Walmart in China made me feel at home (Wo Er Ma 沃尔玛!)

You can imagine my excitement when I was standing in a bus in Zhengzhou, China and glanced up to see the words "Walmart." To me, Walmart = Home. Walmart is more American than just about anything I can think of. It is more American than baseball and hot dogs. Hey; it is more American than hot dogs AT a baseball game. So when I saw the Walmart sign and the weird circle logo thing (I feel like I am waiting for my computer to finish loading), I knew that I would be back. If you build it, they will come (Walmart and Americans that is).

I was talking to a friend one day and happened to causally mention Walmart (I happen to mention Walmart a lot whenever I feel casual). She had told me that she really wanted to go to Walmart as well. She had spent a year and a half on an LDS mission in New York but never had the chance to go to Walmart. Basically the equivalent of going to China and not seeing the great wall. For sad. So we both made up our minds that we were going to Walmart!

On a nice sunny Saturday (I know... bad idea to shop on a Saturday in the most populated city, in the most populated province in the most populated country in the world...) we decided to hop on a bus that would take us directly to Walmart. About 200 people and 45 minutes later, we finally showed up at Walmart!

In front of Walmart

My Chinese Walmart

Let's think about Walmart for a minute. Walmart is a super store that sells everything at the lowest possible prices. To do this, they get all of the products from the places that sell them the cheapest. It is pretty safe to say that China is one of the places Walmart gets their products from.

This is great news for me because it basically means that every store here is like Walmart! Low low prices. I went exploring a couple of days ago and found a supermarket fairly similar to Walmart, but noticed some very distict differences.