The anticlimactic egg post

"So eggs, huh?"*

Buying eggs at the grocery store is very important in our family.

In China, you don't just go over to the refrigerator, open a carton to check for broken eggs, and plop it in your cart. For some reason, I thought the whole world bought eggs that way.

Here, they don't believe in refrigerating eggs. I guess you don't really have to, but it keeps the bacteria count down. I try to remember this as I eat my cookie dough (just kidding, Mommy!)(sort of...). You can buy eggs in boxes or cartons, and they're stored on the shelf-- also not in the fridge. But most people don't buy them in cartons anyway.

The grocery stores here open at 9 or 9:30. There's always a small horde of old people ready to bang down the doors when they open. (I've never seen anyone under 60 buy eggs-- except for me.) They all shuffle directly to the egg department and stand in line for their eggs.

See, eggs are only sold twice a day: once in the morning (usually) and once in the afternoon (usually). If you get there after the eggs have sold out, then tough luck and wait for the afternoon eggs. One morning I went, and the line extended all the way past the milk and yogurt department to the meat counter. There were easily 60 people in line. If you go first thing in the morning, you can easily wait 45 minutes or an hour in line.

Once your turn is up, you get to wait while the egg lady packs your eggs into a bag-- yes, a bag like you'd buy fruit or veggies in. And yes, a lady stands there packing eggs one by one as people wait on her. When you have 1.3 billion people needing jobs, efficiency isn't always your first priority. She stands by some crates full of farm-fresh eggs, still occasionally decorated with chicken poo. She puts 20 eggs in each bag, weighs it, and then slaps a barcode sticker on it. You put it in your cart and hope to only break a couple as you shop, take them through check-out, load them in your grocery bag, jostle them through crowds, and finally get them home.

Some eggs inevitably break as she packs them, and the egg lady usually sets them aside. Some people cut to the front of the line, pick through the broken eggs, and buy them for a discount. At the end of the egg sale, the lady cracks all the broken eggs into bags, and you can buy them like that-- sloshing around in a clear plastic bag.

At first it kind of bothered me that the eggs weren't sold in dozens. I mean, wouldn't it be just as easy to put 24 in a bag as 20? But it didn't take me long to realize that 10 or 20 eggs makes a lot more sense than a dozen or two dozen. Who invented dozens, anyway?

So that's how you buy eggs.

*And I know you were wondering about the quote at the beginning. That was my brother-in-law's famously successful pick-up line to my sister. They met buying eggs at the grocery store.