Cliff and I decided to go to "the store" to make a couple of purchases...and by store I mean to a basement market and a small grocery market. These are a couple of the things we brought home:


We bought some snacks--chips, snickers, oreos, pockys--but the most interesting ones to pick out were the savory snacks. I bought some kimchee flavored potato chips and Cliff picked out some American BBQ Bugles. It was a fairly difficult choice for me, because I also had Italian Meat, Cherry Tomato, Grilled Meat, Sweet Chicken Meat Tomato and Cucumber potato chips to choose from. Cliff didn't have as many Bugle choices, but he did have BBQ, American Cheese and regular flavors of Bugles. I'll have to try them all.


We also got some sweets....Pockys of course!!! I got vanilla ones and Cliff wanted to try the Pizza ones. Vanilla wasn't so good.


We then headed down to this underground market to order some sheets for our king size bed. We kinda goofed up when we moved here, as we packed up all of our queen size sheets and we have a king, standard and single bed. So, there is a small shop with alot of fabric and they have bedsheets and curtains on display. We picked out some fabric, which I think is of decent quality--maybe about 300 thread count--and are giving it a go. We picked a basic beige sheet that had a sateen stripe pattern. They charged me 200 RMB (about $28.50) for a king size fitted sheet, flat sheet and four pillowcases. I suspect that I paid a substantial foreigner tax on this price, even after some bargaining. We figure that this is part of the "China Experience".

Another of the observations that I made here is the prevalence of "Mei Bai" or beautiful white. I look a country bumpkin here--I'm all dark and dressed weird, by Chinese standards. Even by US standards, I'm pretty dark...I wasn't the best at putting on sunscreen on the last couple weeks in the states. Due to the amount of time we spent rock climbing and in the M3, I've become a shade of tan that definately sticks out here. So today, Cliff and I went to go buy a set of Chinese visors that we can use on our bikes. These things are completely ridiculous. It is the size of a welders mask and comes in every color of the rainbow. We got a couple of black ones that have a pattern on the visor. We paid 35 RMB for both, which is about 5 USD. The visors claim to keep out 99% of UV rays and while we look like goombas wearing them, we look like Chinese Goombas, and blending in and becoming one with the culture is part of the program, so we've obliged.

Looks pretty good huh? Below is a front and profile view...


Its pretty hard to top all of the great treasures we brought home, but we did accomplish one other thing of note...we got a massage at a blind-man massage place. It truly was a place to get the "Peoples Massage". Basically, you go in, they lay a sheet on a massage table and then they lay a sheet on top of you. No taking off clothes, fancy smelling candles, soft music or tranquil decor. My massage lady had to take appointments at the front door, so I had a couple breaks in service. Cliff's lady was texting someone while giving his massage. There were a couple tables in the same room, so I also got to hear all sorts of chinese conversations. The environment was pretty crude, but the massage was not bad and the price was pretty d@#m impressive (50 RMB for an hour, which equals about $7.50). We have another place, Bodhi, that we like going to, it had a happy hour massage special on mon-thurs--one hour of massage for 98 RMB (14 USD) and it includes snacks and fresh juice. Its a hard call for us...get one or two massages for the same price? So, when you all come visit China, you can have your choice of what side of China you want to see.