Recently, I've taken to avoiding the supermarkets anywhere near lunch time. Here, they have taken to selling deeply inferior dim sum items at noon or later along with various stir fried noodles and stir fried rice that I wouldn't feed my imaginary dog.
I worked it out when, in a rare moment of early wakefulness (I had a train to catch), I spotted that all this lunchtime delight was already laid out at 8 am, ready to sit there for 4 hours before being sold. I also overheard the banana stacking assistant being told to man (woman) the stir fried noodles stall, complaining that she didn't know how to stir fry noodles (must be the only one in China) and being told to "look like you do know!" (Most people assume I don't understand Chinese. I seldom enlighten them.)
Still it's better than the sushi counter with its samples which look like they may have been assembled pre-1945.
