China’s Curious Impulse Buy Sections
…And an equally curious absence in American checkout aisles.
Sometimes, when you live in another country long enough, the strange things you encounter become a mirror that shows you things that don’t make sense about your own society.
What we are looking at in the above picture is a self-service kiosk in a Chinese supermarket, next to which is a small display case of condoms.
Yes, they have prophylactics in the impulse buy section of Chinese shops. It’s very common — and not just in supermarkets, but in smaller convenience stores as well. And as you can see, that includes the self-service section, which means you never have to encounter another human being when you buy them.
Once upon a time, this would have been easily explained as part of China’s population management policies. Yet those policies have been relaxed and yet nothing has changed. Years removed from the One-Child Policy and one can still obtain prophylactics alongside candy and gum.
But all I can think of as I look at this picture is…why don’t we do this in the United States? And I don’t mean that in a prescriptive sense, though the harm reduction advocate in me would like to argue in favor of it. I mean, why is it that, culturally, we don’t do this?
