Shopping

These outdoor residential markets are open all week and have noticeably fresher and nicer vegetables than the supermarkets at cheaper prices, but buying them is a bit more complicated. You need to be able to ask the price, which is usually per 斤(jīn) 、about one pound. 好多(hăoduō) is Sichuan hua (dialect) for 多少(duōshăo), or how much. The only other Sichuan hua I can now recognize is shao3 de2 for 知道(zhīdao, know).

China is supposed to be a paradise for shoppers – so much stuff, for so little money compared to whatever Western country you hail from. I am still learning to do it – I need to avoid shopping when I don’t have the energy to bargain and lapse into the 'accept the foreigner price’ mode. For clothes, the sizes are varying degrees of tiny, and you also need to be prepared for clothes that are not clean when you first buy them. You might also need to squeeze through a crowded multistory complex of booths until you find the one small thing you are looking for, and perhaps see a rat killed while you browse (happened the other day on Computer Street). Other than that, yep, lots of stuff for not much money compared to home.

I am in the middle of my second bad cold in two months and feel as grey as the weather, and am working now which makes being sick that much less convenient. My TESOL course said that six weeks is the average time to end up in the pit of culture shock before you start coming out of it. I hope it does not get much worse.