A trip to Ruijiang Fruit & Vegetable Market

About once a week I try to navigate my way over to Ruijiang Fruit & Vegetable Market.  During our first week in Tianjin a very kind mom (also an expat from the US) introduced us to this market. Thank you Angela! .  I didn't bring a camera with me on my first trip there but now that I have an iPhone it's so easy to take photos!  And the iPhone also explains why my China photos aren't super sharp or clear. 😉  

It's an unheated indoor market with lots of stalls each individually operated. (very similar to a farmer's market back home).  You can find all kinds of things here…

This stand has a variety of dried beans and nuts for sale.

Strawberries!!! They must be in season somewhere in China as you can find them everywhere.  I buy half a kilogram of strawberries by pointing to them and say "ee gin" (that's my phonetic spelling; I have no idea how it's spelled in pinyin). "Ee gin" means 500 grams (at least that's what I hope it means!) Remember, the units here are in metric- leave your pounds, grams and ounces at home!  Oh, and these strawberries are amazingly sweet!  Even the pink ones are sweet. I'm not going to speculate why they're so sweet…I'll just wash them with my fruit wash and enjoy! 

I'm still struggling remembering the numbers in Chinese (it's really not that hard but I get easily flustered).  Fortunately, the vendors I've bought from either have a calculator or pencil and paper so they can show me the price. I am working on my Chinese though!  

I think these are dried chilies. You could probably set your mouth on fire eating them!

Eggs!!! All kinds of eggs. (I even saw cute tiny quail eggs for sale)

Ginger, anyone??

More veggies and herbs

This is the stand I buy my veggies from.

One last look at the market.

 What you didn't get to see in the photos are the stands selling fruits, noodles, fish, chicken and other unidentifiable stuff.  Maybe we will get to that in a different post…