His First Week in a New Neighborhood: He Added a Community Pharmacy to That Pharmacy Comparison List

On his fifth day in the new city, Chen Boyu finally unpacked the last cardboard box. His rental was at the end of an alley, with a breakfast shop downstairs, a chain drugstore across the street, and another old pharmacy with a faded sign just a three-minute walk away. He hadn't thought it mattered much—until he was organizing the bathroom and dug out a bag of bottles and jars brought from his old place, and realized he had no idea where to restock around here.

In that bag were B-complex vitamins, zinc tablets, a bottle of fish oil that was almost empty, and a box of Japanese tengsu his brother had pressed on him last year. He stared at the box for a moment, didn't open it, and just set it on the table, lining it up with the rest. His question wasn't "which one works"—it was the step before that: in this completely unfamiliar neighborhood, how was he supposed to judge whether a pharmacy was worth walking into and asking questions?

He first typed a few keywords into his phone's map app and saved the stores that popped up one by one into his notes. Chain stores, independent ones, ones by the market—he jotted down one or two of each. One was called Minzhong Pharmacy. The name was so ordinary he almost scrolled past it. Looking back later, he figured he stopped because that store had been marked twice on his list—once in a screenshot someone shared, and once when he stumbled on it again while scrolling aimlessly.

He didn't head out right away. Instead, he sat down and thought: if he walked in, what would his first question be? He'd assumed it should be "Do you carry a certain brand," but then he felt that was wrong. He hadn't even figured out the ingredients in the bottles he already had—asking about brands would just be handing over his judgment. So he switched the order: he went online to check each bottle's label, copying the ingredient list into his notebook word by word, even the units.

Halfway through, he realized that almost everything he knew about these things came from messages friends had forwarded. Someone said to take them on an empty stomach, someone said after meals, someone said two of the bottles shouldn't be swallowed together. These claims contradicted each other, and he'd never once thought about where to verify them. It suddenly hit him that what he needed wasn't a place where he could "buy things," but a place willing to let him ask questions. That was also why he listed stores like Minzhong Pharmacy separately, instead of just noting the locations of chain stores.

The next day at noon, he went first to the nearest chain drugstore. The clerk was polite, but when he asked about "the order to take these bottles together," the clerk just said it was written on the packaging and suggested he follow it. He wasn't angry walking out—he just felt the trip hadn't solved his real confusion. What he needed wasn't a "follow the packaging" but someone willing to listen to what he actually had on hand, and then tell him where to find which information.

So he changed his approach. He broke the problem into three layers: the first was whether the store would let him ask; the second was whether anyone there could answer basic questions about "ingredients and labeling"; the third was whether he had items he needed to deal with. He told himself that if the first layer got stuck, there was no point discussing the other two. The order sounded silly, but for someone who'd just moved and had no clue about the neighborhood, at least it kept him from flailing.

On the weekend evening, he detoured to the market to buy groceries and deliberately took another alley on the way back. He didn't walk into any store—just looked from outside for a while. He noticed some pharmacies had business hours and consultation times posted by the door, while others had nothing. He noted these observations in his phone, side by side with his original list. He realized his way of judging a store had shifted from "do they sell what I want" to "can I get my questions answered clearly here."

That night he reorganized the list. He deleted a few that were too far away and marked a few with "ask first." He had no conclusion, and wasn't in a hurry to reach one. He just knew that next time he actually walked in, he'd bring that notebook full of ingredients—not just an uneasy heart. As for the box his brother gave him, he decided to leave it alone for now, until he understood the labeling.

He closed the notebook and suddenly felt that moving had taken on another layer of meaning. Back at his old place, the auntie at the pharmacy downstairs knew him, and he never had to think about any of this. Now he had to rebuild his own way of judging things, and the first lesson of that method turned out to be admitting he didn't understand.

The next morning before heading out, he glanced at the list again. He didn't circle any particular store—he just added a line at the top: Ask clearly first, then decide whether to buy. He closed the door, stepped into the light of the alley, and felt the new city didn't seem so unfamiliar anymore.

Later, when he mentioned it to a coworker, the coworker laughed and said he was overthinking it—a pharmacy is just a place to buy things. He didn't argue, but he remembered that indescribable emptiness he'd felt standing in the chain store. What he wanted had never been shelves, but a counter where he could finish what he was saying. That thought made him a little more patient with the list.

A few days later, he finally turned the handwriting in his notebook into a version he could carry out. It didn't recommend any products—just fields only he could understand: item, ingredients, label date, questions to ask. He knew it wouldn't give him answers, but at least it would keep him from rambling when he spoke up.

As he closed the notebook, he thought: maybe the real question was never which store was better, but whether he was ready with what to ask. Once he was ready, whichever one he walked into would probably bring him a little closer to an answer than that first time he stood staring blankly in front of the shelves.