What is that?

When we meet friends for a dim sum lunch in the international district, there's usually some shopping at the Uwajimaya store ($15 minimum purchase) to get parking tickets validated. But last time we ate at a different restaurant and parked for free near the Viet-Wah Supermarket. It's like a budget Uwajimaya with medicinal Chinese herbs and housewares. Most people here think of Uwajimaya when they think of an Asian grocery store, but our savvy friends say it's for tourists and shoppers who don't know any better. Why pay premium prices for Asian staples? I read in the paper that Viet-Wah sells SIX TONS of rice a week in Seattle. And everything in the grocery section is cheaper than Uwajimaya. Although a walk down the condiment aisle is bewildering:

There's an American success story behind the store. A Vietnamese "boat person" of Chinese descent named Duc Tran immigrated to Seattle in 1988. He first stayed with a pastor's family where he learned to eat meatloaf and mashed potatoes, but what he really wanted was food from home. Starting out as a dishwasher, with hard work and business smarts he opened the first Viet-Wah store and eventually became the president of a 20 million dollar retail food business.

But to be perfectly honest, the first thing that hits you when those Viet-Wah doors snap open is the smell. Chinese grocery stores apparently smell like that everywhere. But what is it? A strikingly complex bad odor, dominated by old fish and produce with undertones of dust and container ship. But there's something else, something not quite identifiable. Could it be the durian fruit?
This fruit is so pungent it's been banned in many public places around the world. Don't try to take it on the train in Singapore or you might get caned by the transit police! I'll never know, but people say it tastes like a cross between chocolate and onion. The smell is compared to "a month of unwashed gym socks." There was a time when U.S. import laws didn't even allow the fruit in our country, so you had to travel to Canada if you had a taste for it. But Mr. Tran lobbied the government and won the right to import it into the U.S. It is now offered for sale at his grocery stores.

Here we are, clogging up the aisles for the serious shoppers. After much discussion, everyone bought tea. No one bought durian.
Plenty of unusual and pungent fish...not to mention live turtles, frogs and eels.

Also squirming little crabs-- definitely not Dungeness.
And a scary-looking Chinese herb section. As our friend Don Phu said: "You must know what you are doing."