The Chinese version of Amazon.com - Taobao

Amazon.com started out as an online bookstore. Since that time it has turned into the largest online retailer selling just about anything. It has become a place where people go to get reviews on and buy products. Amazon is a great place for people like me; people who like getting cheap stuff but don't really want to go out shopping for it. You can imagine my excitement when I found out about the Chinese equivalent: taobao.com

Cheap Food in China

China has cheap food. A lot of cheap food. Not only is it cheap, it is usually quite delicious. Originally I was planning on posting this later when I had more pictures of food, but I think I can show this now and if I get more pictures in the future, I will just post another food series.

The point of this post is twofold. First, to make people jealous of the cheap food I get to eat that they don't. Second, I wish to document the food I am eating and the prices for them. Mainly though I just want to make people jealous.

The true meaning of Christmas - Brought to you by the country China

I have noticed three main aspects of Christmas.

The first aspect is more than apparent the day after Thanksgiving. The commercialism of Christmas is perhaps the most visible thing we see of Christmas. During this time of year, people who are typically very frugal (like me) and save all their money splurge a bit and do their part to stimulate the economy. Businesses do well and new markets seem to pop up (think Christmas music or movies; also don't forget those sweaters that don't stand a chance of being sold if not for the ugly sweater contests). While all of this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does fall short of being the true meaning of Christmas.

I KTVed and I Liked It

A singing microphone is only one of the many reasons why KTV is incredibly awesome.

At the beginning of this semester, I had all my students introduce themselves. During part of the introductions, I would ask the students what they do for fun here. There were basically three responses: Shopping, surfing the Internet and KTV.

I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike

(First of all... I should mention that I am ironically listening to the song Bicycle by Queen right now with my music player being on random)

When I first got to China (and before I even got here) I debated whether or not I should purchase a nice bike. I could not decide if it would be worth my money to have a bike for only one year even though I might just ride it a handful of times. The traffic here is pretty crazy and I thought buying a bike might be the same as buying cancer. I was able to borrow a bicycle though and after riding it once, I decided that it was liberating enough to be a good investment.

The bike you see above I bought the day after my first paycheck. It cost me almost my entire paycheck. It was 1460 RMB ($230 USD). It is a 21 speed with disc brakes and SRAM gear shifters. I really don't know if it is all that great of a deal (maybe someone who knows anything about bikes can post a comment) but I have liked the bike so far.

This blog post will be a virtual ride in China with me and my bike.

A Engrish Park in China

I went to the park the other day and saw a lot of cool things! I enjoy reading all the great Engrish they have here.

I think this is called Men Qiu. Door ball. Something like that. They have these set up everywhere in China, but I think they have an age limit of 65 and older.

Shopping in China is fun!

National Day in China is a pretty big deal. It is an entire week that people get off of work or school to celebrate. By...  um... not going to work or school. Unless of course you are not a teacher then you still go to work. The only other way I saw that people celebrated was by massing together into one gigantic clump to go shopping!

Notice how the traffic is only going one way. I am pretty sure there is only one place people wanted to shop.