Cheap Stuff

Today I traveled to Wall Mart and to the shopping district called Zar Toa (sar-two, it's all in the tones). Anyways, I just wanted to remark on the inexpensiveness of commercial items here in Daqing. I bought a four pair of socks from a street vendor for 10 RMB (7 RMB is $1). Addias, Gucci and Li Ning (all famous athletic brands). I was tempted to buy a pet crab at Wall Mart as the first thing you encounter as you entre Wall Mart is a huge fresh seafood section (just like Wall Mart at home). Today's special was fist-sized, black crabs. They were about 1000 or so crabs in what are not meant to be a live animal tanks and these little guys were building escape ramps with their spindly bodies and jumping to their freedom. Unfortunately their was an aproned staff member whose job for the day was scrambling to capture the liberal minded dinner items and returning them to the stockade. Humorous and mildly depressing at the same time. What was not depressing or humorous was the tub of moving silk-worm pupae (half developed silk worm babies for the non-scientific folk following along) which were for sale as food items. They are bout the size of a chocolate, foil-wrapped Easter egg or a smallish pigeon egg, chestnut coloured and dull looking. You might actually mistake them for the delicious Belgian chocolate sea-shells until you look close and with unblinking eyes see that there is sporadic movement in the tub. I'll let you know if I get the courage to try one of those suckers. I actually was shopping for tea and found something resembling Red-Rose Tea. My salvation has been found. I was down to my last Tetley Tea bag that I had brought from home. I can continue to exist (I am not a coffee drinker so finding this foreign delicacy was a bit of a challenge). Wall Mart to the rescue (sad, i know it is a sad day when wall mart is my knight in shining armour, i will hang my head in shame).

The tea was the most expensive thing I purchased today. The socks were a great bargain. My friend purchased the best knock-off hand bag ever. It was a not-so-authentic Gucci-Vitton satchel. It was a Louis Vitton bag as it had the LV insignia in the material but the enterprising young knock-off creators didn't notice this and added the lovely Gucci label between the handles. Brilliant snag as it only cost 35 RMB (again calculate the 7 RMB equalling $1 CAD so it was 5 bucks).

I purchased three DVDs for 21 RMB ($3 CAD) but what is great about these DVDs is that two of them have 8 movies per disk. Yes, eight. I now have the entire Hannibal Lecter quadriology and American Psycho (which yours-truly stars in as a special skills extra) on the same disk. The best part about this cheap knock off store is that in order to get to the good DVDs you have to go upstairs past the sparsely stocked shelves on the main floor to the back of the second level and behind a shelf that has been moved away from a roughly cut door-shaped hole in the wall. Behind this hole in the wall is another room with the DVDs that we wanted. Thousands of pirated disks. As we left the store they were closing up for the night so the hole in the wall was covered by a large promotional poster for a famous Chines movie and then the shelving unit was slid back against the wall and the hidden room simply disappeared. Awe, to know your city and all its quirks and eccentricities is to love your city. We haggled with our cabi on the way home as he tried to get an extra 10 RMB out of us (again just over a dollar when we were only paying $2.25 for a 10 minute ride). We finished off our day by having a $0.70 dinner of fried rice in the student cafeteria on the floor below my school.

Ahh, I have found 'la doce vida'.