I walked past the intersection of wen hua xiang and wen ling jie and saw in the large indoor fruit/vegetable market, next to the hotel there that once refused me a room because I was a foreigner, a box of avacados. They looked ripe and tasty. I ran in to buy a few knowing they would be pricey, and told myself I would go 20 to 30 RMB a pound, but no more. I was utterly stunned to see that they were 158 RMB per gong jin (公斤)!!! I asked the girl there and she totally confirmed that that was indeed the price with a look of confusion that I would have to ask even. My math may be a little faulty but that is about 25$ a kilogram, or 12 or 13$ a pound! When I can get more local produce for 10 or 15 kuai than I am comfortable toting home this just seems absurd and the only logic I can find is that is simply outrageous local "foreigner tax", since avacados are almost 100% a food foreigners buy. Have to say the experience was a bit depressing really and I used to get avacados in Beijing (when they were available) for almost western prices. What is up with KM and this simply unethical attitude towards imports? Love paying 3 to 4x the American price for canned foods at Paul's on wen hua xiang. Jeesh.

I do not think that it is a foreigner price. Some products in Yunnan are, in fact, expensive, and ally it has to do with supply chains and transport, etc.

Advocado's are really transportable though and grown throughout Vietnam, not far away from us at all! I remember buying them for like 5000 dong in the south, cheap as chips and bloody delicious. I suspect they aren't available here as nobody eats them (even though I have let a number of locals try Salvador's advocados before and they have loved them). You can sometimes get them in Metro but the prices are pretty much just as horrendous.

in Jiaoling lu after the Xiyuan crossroad you have avocados from peru, 1kg for 80kuai. still expensive but what can you do...

Back home, i used to grow them in my backyard, so i refuse to pay the exorbitant price here. But like tomman said, it has nothing to do with targetting the local foreigner market.

The overall local demand is probably too low. But it's surprising to see how much import tax the Chinese are willing to pay to be able to live like a foreigner.

When are avocadoes in full season?
If they are early season, expect higher prices to begin with.

Does Chinese have a word for avocado? I can't find it.

I bought figs, 无花果, a couple of times on the street but not this year.

I have had the same experience as blobbles, if Chinese try them, they seem to like them.

Mandarin is 鳄梨 e4 li2
Crocodile pear.

But what Kunminghua is I have no idea.

Thanks tiger. I must have spelled advocado, er... avacado, er... avocado incorrectly when trying Google translate

I smell a business oppourtunity.

Find someone with a Mian Bao Che. Drive down to southern Vietnam (3 days?).

Buy an enormous amount of avocado from unripe to almost ripe.

Drive back up to Kunming.

Sell em for 10 kuai each as they ripen over the next month. I suspect you would buy them for 1 kuai each in Vietnam if bought in bulk.

Say it cost 1000 kuai in fuel. 2 overnight stops, maybe 2000 kuai all up for costs if you did it cheap (not including distribution here). 1 box is usually 20. Maybe around 100 boxes in a Mian Bao Che = 2000 avocado. 20k kuai raw profit, pay 1000 for the Mian Bao Che, another 1000 in distribution, say 1/8 were unsold/unsellable... about 13k profit. Not bad. I wonder if there is any duty on them at the Chinese border?

Who is with me?