Shanghai wet markets and cooked-food counters: how locals actually shop

A Shanghai wet market is where people buy dinner. It is not staged for visitors, and that is the point of it: it belongs to the city’s mornings and evenings rather than to its sightseeing. Indoor markets are the norm today, and the open-air market of the imagination belongs to an earlier era; a market is now usually a hall of one or two floors, with the stalls let individually. This guide names no market and quotes no prices.

What is in a market: the layout and how the stalls work

The zoning varies by market but the shape is the same. Vegetables take the most space, and the dry goods, which keep longest, are usually off to one side.

• Vegetables. The largest section, greens piled in banks and soft leaves pulled off to order.
• Pork. A chiller cabinet and a chopping block, with meat cut to order: chunks, slices or minced.
• Freshwater fish and live seafood. Live fish swim in tanks, and the vendor nets the one you point at.
• Tofu and soy products. Tofu, dried tofu, vegetarian “chicken”, hundred-layer sheets and fried gluten.
• Eggs. Sold loose by the piece, or the vendor fills a bag for you.
• Dry goods. Shiitake, wood ear, dried noodles and vermicelli, dried shrimp and bean curd sticks.
• Noodles. Fresh-cut noodles, wonton wrappers and rice cakes, plus wontons wrapped on site.

Markets usually have a cooked-food counter and a breakfast stall as well. A market is working properly if it has chiller cabinets and a floor with drainage.

One reality first: most markets have moved indoors, with a roof, running water, power and a common set of scales, the result of upgrading since the 1990s. Open-air street markets still exist, but only at the edges of the old city or in early-morning wholesale hours, and they are small and irregular.

What a visitor can do, and how to buy without Chinese

Four things are possible, none of them requiring planning: buy fruit, since the stalls by the vegetable section or the entrance are cheaper than those near attractions; buy cooked food to take back as one dish of a meal; eat standing at a breakfast stall inside, over a bowl of noodles or wonton; and take photographs.

Photography needs its own paragraph. This is a place of business, not an attraction. Vendors are selling, customers are in a hurry, and the aisles are narrow. Photograph goods, stalls and the room rather than putting a lens in someone’s face; for a person in the frame, point at the camera and then at them and wait for a nod or a wave. If the answer is a wave, put the camera down. Blocking an aisle to compose a shot causes more resentment than the photograph itself.

Buying comes down to pictures, hands, language. Point at what you want and gesture the quantity; two fingers is two portions, an open palm is roughly a half-jin. Establish first whether the price is by weight or by the item, the commonest source of confusion: fruit, cooked food, meat and vegetables go by weight, while eggs, breakfast items, noodles and anything boxed go by the piece. The price is on the scale, not on the goods. The electronic scale’s display is where the price lives, and most goods carry no ticket at all; read the number, shake your head if it is not what you expected, then reach for your phone. Payment is almost entirely by QR code; cash usually works in a large market but is not always convenient, as the payments and money guide sets out.

Expect one more thing: the pleasure of a market is watching the process, not shopping. There is no commentary and no seating, the smell is real, and washing your hands is awkward. As the first stop of a morning it works; late in a tired afternoon it does not.

The cooked-food counter, explained properly

The most useful thing in the market for a visitor is the cooked-food counter, the 熟食 (shushi) counter. It sells food that is already made: braised items such as soy-sauce duck and red-braised pork; fried items such as small yellow croaker and smoked fish; and cold dishes such as dressed salads, wine-and-brine preparations, seaweed and shredded dried tofu.

The buying works differently from the rest of the market: it is sold by weight and cut to order. You ask for as much as you want and it is cut for you, a few ounces is fine, then dressed with a ladle of sauce and bagged or boxed. Buying only what you need for one meal, rather than a whole bird, is the practical advantage.

Locals buy from it on the way home because one stir-fried green at home and the meal is complete.

Keeping it is the part that has to be spelled out. What you eat today and what you intend to carry are two different things.

• Braised and wine-brined items are fine eaten the same day; a night in the fridge is acceptable but the flavour drops.
• Cold dressed dishes keep worst of all: with no reheating step, if it will not be eaten within a few hours, do not buy it.
• Stir-fried greens do not travel: they steam themselves yellow.
• Fried items go soft once cold, so reheat them that evening.

Buying cooked food to eat later the same day is normal; buying it to carry for a long time is not. Hours of travel, a warm bag and no fridge are exactly the conditions meat and cold dishes handle worst.

How it compares with a supermarket food hall, and the honest word on freshness

The market wins on freshness, range, small quantities and choice: vegetables and freshwater fish mostly arrive the same day, you can buy the amount for a single meal, you can have a fish killed and cleaned while you wait, and prices are usually below a supermarket’s for the same quality. The supermarket food hall wins on cleanliness, clear labelling, fixed prices, cards and late closing: imported goods, packaged food and anything whose ingredients you need to read belong there.

The division of labour follows: same-day vegetables, live fish and cooked food from the market; milk, bread, imported condiments, bottled drinks and snacks from the supermarket.

On freshness, the good part is worth stating plainly: vegetables and freshwater fish are usually very fresh here. Many stalls take delivery the same day, and cooked food is cut and dressed in front of you.

What to avoid is equally specific:

• Braised items and cold dishes that have been sitting and have dulled in colour.
• Fruit that has been cut and boxed for an unknown length of time.
• Cold dressed dishes and cooked meat in hot weather, when the risk rises.
• On a stall you do not know, uncooked items that cannot be peeled or skinned.
• Raw or partly raw seafood, which a visitor does not need to try in a market.

Food hygiene standards have been improving for years and this guide makes no general judgement about them. For a traveller, avoiding a few specific categories is more useful than worrying about the room.

Fitting it into a trip, and what disappoints

Who it suits: anyone interested in ordinary daily life; anyone who wants something cooked in front of them in the morning; anyone who wants fruit or cooked food to take back to where they are staying. How long: twenty to forty minutes for a walk through, an hour if you are buying and sitting down to eat. When to go: seven to nine in the morning is best, when the produce is freshest and the breakfast stalls are still open; after ten, some cooked-food stalls have closed and others are half empty; five to six in the evening is busiest at the cooked-food counter, by which point the vegetables are past their best.

How to pair it: a market goes well with a walk through the surrounding residential streets, since the two are the same few blocks. It works the other way round too: leave early, eat breakfast at the market, start the day.

The disappointment to know about in advance: many older markets have been renovated into something closer to a food court. Uniform fit-out, bright lighting, dry floors, and the old stalls replaced by catering units: better looking, and the hygiene problem solved. The gap is real: what you came to see and what the place now offers are not quite the same thing.

Other versions are common enough. An old market shrinks, or moves into a building and keeps only a handful of stalls. A market near an attraction still sells food, but prices and range have drifted towards visitors. After lunch, what is left at the cooked-food counter is not much of a choice.

The response is simple. If all you want is cooked food, fruit and a standing breakfast, a renovated market and an unrenovated one will both do. If you want to see how a market actually runs, find one in a residential neighbourhood that is still trading normally, and go expecting the everyday.