There are some things we just simply cannot find in Beijing. This short post lays down the skinny on the things from home that we didn’t know we would miss so much, and our global quest to import goods from around the world.
To be clear, you can find just about anything in Beijing. Craft Beer, good coffee, affordable good wines, Pepperidge Farm cookies, and corn tortillas are among the many luxury goods available in our neighborhood. The nearby Sanlitun neighborhood offers movie theaters with full-length feature films in English and gluten-free pizza.
The big two or three
The main thing we can’t find, but really want, is protein bars. Clif Bars, a staple in my backpack or cycling jersey pockets, are nowhere to be found here. Many times I have second-guessed myself, thinking “There must be Clif Bars here, they’re just so common everywhere else these days.” But no- I really can’t find them. I was recently taunted by the sight of a Clif Bar vending machine in Sweden, sitting there on the train platform in Stockholm, reminding me of their paucity in Beijing. But it’s not merely Clif Bars that are conspicuously absent- we cannot find any good protein bars, the type that you would find in a 7-11, Whole Foods, or Mellow Johnny’s Bike shop. Instead, we have found ample fruit and nut bars, mostly from Australia, and some of those paltry dry oatmeal bars. What gives? Are protein bars a uniquely American thing?
The other main thing we can’t find in Beijing is spicy salsa. Having refined our taste for hot peppers in Austin Texas, it might not come as a surprise that our demand for spicy salsa is unmet in Beijing. There are several good taco places here, with some notable newcomers in the last year alone. But no quality store-bought salsa. Our homemade delicious breakfast tacos are lonely without a healthy dose of doña.
Specific English-language books could be considered a third missing ingredient, but much less dire than the previous two, since Chelsey has a Kindle, and I have a backlog of books and papers.
Stocking up
Chelsey and I have traveled a lot since being here. Each time we leave the country we have another opportunity to stock up on our needs. We went book shopping and protein bar shopping in Hong Kong, which is one of our new favorite cities. On my recent trip to Austin, I loaded a Whole Foods shopping cart with a variety of protein bars and salsas. We have enough of these items now to last us our last few months here. Chelsey would add that there are specific beauty products that are hard to find, and she’s reluctant to trust medicines here since we can’t read the labels. We brought most of these items with us when we first moved here.