The Barely Living Store
Anyone who has a long history in GZ will recognize the title...or at the very least, the real name: The Daily Living Store. Or, the full length name; Foreign Establishments & Personal Services Company...that is just a long and fancy way of saying, we are owned by the PLA, please fork over your $$ for a dented can of beans.
Our first full day in Guangzhou, I headed off to work and GZ Tai-Tai decided to head out on foot to see what she could see. One of the 'must sees' on the list of new tai-tais was the Daily Living Store. Tai-Tai crossed the road between the Garden Hotel and the store...taking her and FlyRice's life into thier own hands to cross the maze of bicycles, motorbikes, buses and taxis. Once across and into the store, as Tai-Tai relates it to me, she nearly burst into tears.
A solitary lamp burning in the center of several dirty, sparsely stocked shelves containing cans of beans, some laundry soap and out of date boxes of cereal. This was what she risked her life crossing the road for. It was a humbling moment in our learning adventure as an expat in GZ.
As I mentioned, the store was run by the PLA. Everything in the store was humped across the border from Hong Kong and we were charged a premium for all of it. Prices were in HK Dollars and US Dollars...RMB was frowned upon when trying to pay. Most of the items on the shelves were out of date...and ALL of the cans of whatever veggies, fruits or beans were available, were dented...always.
And they had a dairy case...this was a refrigerator with a glass front that was probably 1/2 the size of the fridge we had at home. It had Kraft slices and Baby Bel cheeses...and a handful of yogurts.
A routine visit to the store would set you back a couple hundred bucks (USD) and you would walk out with two plastic carry bags and a case of UHT Milk. We purchased our first thanksgiving turkey here...a 12 lb Norbest turkey for slightly over $100.
As the years went on, the Daily Living Store's usefulness began to run out as China signed on to WTO and Hong Kong began to become more and more open for the citizens of southern China. We had more and more stores in town that would import products and could be sold (although confiscatory still) at a cheaper price than the army was willing to offer. And, as time went along, those expiration dates on products became more and more inline with the actual date on the calendar...and then actually falling into the future.
Today, the store is long gone. A victim of the rampant capitalism that is China. More competition and a more of a demand for cheap fashion clothing has driven the space into small apparel shops along the road. But the sign remains.
It will always be known as the Barely Living Store to us...and although we helped finance the PLA for a few years and hated shopping there...they did serve a purpose and that old sign reminds us of the past days in this city, when it was so much different than today.
