Hard to find items in Chengdu?

[Liam]

Hey everybody, I’m getting ready to move to China in a few weeks and am wondering if there are any “must bring” items I should buy before I depart. I saw this post a few weeks ago, and have also done some researching online, and it seems the general consensus is that you can now find most things in major Chinese cities. Is it still difficult to find (decent) deodorant in China? Dental floss?

Any other items that people are having difficulty finding, feel free to post them here.

[Brendan]

Well for starters deodorant and dental floss you will find in many supermarkets and pharmacy stores like Watsons. As mentioned before, even supposedly hard to find items can usually be found online on stores like Taobao, or ordered in via mail order from Hong Kong, etc.

[Kim Duistermaat]

For Chengdu, in our case: dish washer detergent. Or dishwashers themselves, actually (they’re here, but very small)! Cake decorating things. Yummy things from your own country (there are ‘imported’ shelves in big supermarkets but they may not carry what you fancy). Clothes and shoes in larger (or average European) sizes. Your own preferred medicines. But as long as you don’t need these things, I think you’ll be fine.

[Charlie]

If you take medication or nutritional supplements, I’d bring that with you. I really can’t think of anything else that you can’t get here. You can get deodorant but the selection isn’t great, so that might be worth bringing. Dental floss is really easy to find.

[Liam]

Thanks for everybody’s advice and ideas for stuff to bring! Glad to see that dental floss is now more popular, I had a really hard time finding it a couple of years ago in Beijing.

[Author]

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