This is the second in a series of posts about the diverse and fascinating food vendors lining Wulumuqi Lu in the French Concession. You can read the first one here.
Back in Shanghai after a lovely few days in Anji I found my cupboards bare. So, off I trotted to the lovely greengrocer at 274 Wulumuqi Lu. This lady has achieved cult status amongst foreigners in the city. A year ago, she began selling avocados (a rare and expensive delicacy here) at a reasonable price. Word spread, and she became known as The Avocado Lady. Realising the number of her foreign customers was growing, she began offering cheaply priced blueberries for sale. This may not seem strange, but technically she was a vegetable seller, not a fruit seller, and these two food streams never mix. So selling blueberries in a vegetable shop was nothing short of revolutionary. People heard about the cheap blueberries, word spread, and soon enough The Avocado Lady became The Blueberry Lady.
Nowadays, The Blueberry Lady sells basil, sage, parsley, rocket, pine nuts, walnuts, olive oil, mozarella cheese, aged cheddar, Lyle's Golden Syrup and other hard-to-find commodities. Her status as a finder of whatever fresh food you need is unparallelled, and she is now known simply as The Lady. Famous amongst foreigners, enterprising and hard-working, long may she prosper.
Labels: food, Shanghai, street food, Wulumuqi Lu
