Longing for the days when my counter looked like this..
There's nothing better than raiding a supermarket's dairy case for all of its (yet) untried chocolate milk, stuffing the haul in a single, bursting-at-the-seams reusable bag, lugging it through a crowded metro (knowing that nobody else realizes how much goodness lies within), arriving at the accommodation and then lining the fridge with unique shapes/sizes/colors/tastes to be enjoyed in the very near future.
Maybe you bought duplicates of one that looked particularly interesting and you'll have it now. Maybe you alternate glass and plastic bottles in the fridge to mitigate damage should there be any overnight turbulence or tectonic activity. Maybe you give some of the chocolate milks a preliminary shake-up just so they know exactly what to expect ten-to-fourteen hours later.
Maybe none of those things-- you're your own person, after all.
China has been lovely, for a lot of reasons, but abundance of chocolate milk is not one of them.
A successful week's work in Munich, Germany
Having spent 5 weeks in 6 major Chinese cities so far, and having visited hundreds of stores, stands and restaurants throughout, I can confidently say that if a place 'carries' chocolate milk (and that's a big 'if'), it likely has 1 or more of these 4 brands.
Pictured above, in order of prevalence: Yili Family, Mengniu, New Hope, and Plum Park. (I haven't requested professional translations yet, so it's possible these names could change.) Objectively, they all suck.
My initial excitement for seeing these new brands for the first time would soon turn to disappointment (not only because of the taste); every time I would search a store and see the same old brand(s) on the shelf-- widely ignored by a populace whose collective palate is either (1) not inclined to favor chocolate milk, or (2) spurned by the questionable product contained in these ubiquitous vessels.
I think it's a little bit of both. The locals who have been curious enough to try Chinese chocolate milk are likely to be off-put by the less-than-ideal taste they all possess, reinforcing the lack of popularity of the flavor profile. That's how I feel, anyway.
But is even bad chocolate milk good, especially if you've never had good? Is it relative like that? I tend to think not. I think bad-tasting anything just makes you want to avoid it in the future.
Recent chocolate milk bender in Innsbruck, Austria (several not pictured)
Heading to Shanghai next, where (naively?) I have high hopes for there being a much more varied selection of chocolate milk than I've experienced thus far throughout China.
I again want to have a counter-full of bottles and cartons to the extent that I am forced to step several feet back in order to capture it all in one 4:3 photo.
I long for what I had in Lisbon, Munich, Innsbruck, and several other cities not pictured above. Way too many calories, way too much fun.
