The other day, I got a text from my Chinese roommate who said that everyone in China was buying salt like crazy and that if I needed some I should probably buy some too. I vaguely remember that I deleted the text and went back to my nap without giving it a second thought. Crazy and unintelligible texts from Chinese friends are common and I usually chalk them up to mistakes in translation or cultural differences. This text, however, was accurate in that millions of Chinese around the country were, in fact, buying up salt in record numbers.
After more Chinese friends mentioned that their parents had already socked away 20-30 bags of the white stuff, I decided to look into this issue a little more closely. It turns out that rumors through cell phones and the internet had gone viral and started a national movement to buy salt and hoard it in order to protect against the radiation from the nuclear problems in Japan. As there were many different theories and rumors going around, I spent the day at my second job asking every Chinese student why people were buying salt.
I received two basic responses: the first was that eating a lot of Iodized salt will help shield the body from the harmful effects of radiation and the second reason was that many people believe that China gets most of its salt from sea water and that from now on all of the salt will be contaminated. Some of my students confessed to buying a lot of salt and others just laughed and said it was ridiculous. Many people in the countryside, however, took the rumors seriously and bought loads of salt. My roommate's parents as well as her friends parents now have over 30 bags of salt in their home.
Sean and I took a visit to the supermarket in our city and were met with mass chaos. All the stores were out of salt and the price of salt had risen from about 1 RMB a bag (about 15 cents) to in some places over 30 RMB (about $4.50). There were multiple salt distribution stations set up in each store and all of them were empty. Store workers assured us that there would be more salt available soon. Also, most of the soy sauce was out too. Apparently since soy sauce tastes salty, people thought that buying that up would be helpful too.
Recently, because of all of the hysteria, the Chinese government has issued a statement to calm people down and discourage the purchasing of NaCl in epic proportions.
Like I said before, the advantages of living abroad is that it's never boring and you are always apt to wonder, "What's next?"
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