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it has just been waiting for me |
15 March 2008
it's been too long: i haven't written anything on here in ages, chiefly because my laptop is broken and so i can't type things out in the comfort of my room: instead, to make a post, i have to sit and compose it in the office when the computer is available, which is rather more difficult to coordinate, and doesn't necessarily lend itself to deep and meaningful reflection.i have just finished my second week of teaching, and feel as if i'm beginning to settle into a routine of sorts, which i like. i will have been in china for four weeks on sunday/monday, and i'm not sure whether that feels like a long time or a flash in my mind. already, i have places that i like to go for supper or lunch, shops i prefer, routes for visiting places. i don't, however, feel like i've explored much of qingdao. this is chiefly because this city is so big, both geographically and in scale. the streets of the old town, near where i am, may be small, but the modern areas of qingdao are most definitely built on the scale of the automobile. i'm gradually finding more things, but it can be very frustrating, especially when you are functionally illiterate, as all westerners are doomed to be in asia. for example, i was given some quite clear directions to find the hisense store by one of the teachers, but i got off the bus too early. i tried to follow the bus route on foot but lost it almost immediately and spent a long time trudging along the side of an eight lane highway flanked by an endless succession of skyscraping apartment blocks. i'll try again sometime and maybe i'll get there. shopwise i've mostly been patronising the supermarkets for my daily needs. just up the road from the school is a department-store-slash-supermarket called liqun (li-chun) which has most things one could want. but for a more deluxe shopping experience and a dash of europe, i like to get on the 316 bus to the central business district and visit carrefour. chinese carrefour (or ja-le-fou, as they call it) is not quite the same thing as the french original. it is, again, more of a department store than a supermarket, reminding me strongly of a branch of tesco we visited in the czech republic. delightfully, it carries a few distinctly european products, and, as i noticed last time i visited, a comprehensive selection of imported wines. this is comforting to know as i have already had an unpleasant encounter with chinese red wine. let us just say that chinese wine has some way to go before reaching international (ie. good) standards. you can even buy french bread, which is a wonderful change from the endless procession of sweet, bean-pastey, peanutty, soft, air-textured chinese bread. i like a bit of brioche every now and then, but i need savoury bread in my life too. there is also jusco, the japanese shopping giant, which contains a sort of mini-mall within its store. jusco is more expensive than carrefour for some reason, so it tends not to be my preferred port of call. it carries a lot of imported stuff too, although much of it japanese, natch. all of the supermarkets in qingdao have korean sections, because of the significant expat korean population. apparently there is even a koreatown somewhere. in jusco there is also a lot of german food, and you can buy things like twinings tea. the large stores like carrefour and jusco are useful, too, as they take visa, which most small shops and chinese-owned supermarkets don't. having to always carry cash for things is such a drag. i think i've got shopping on the brain this morning, maybe just because i've been spending a lot of time trying to work out where to get things i need or want. of course, almost everything in all the shops is ridiculously cheap. the equivalent of a few pounds goes a long way in chinese shops, and i haven't ceased to marvel at the prices of things. for example, yesterday i bought a drink in the supermarket. my chinese bottle of diet coke cost 2.5 yuan. that's about 17p, for a 600ml bottle. in england i would expect to pay maybe 4, usually 5 and sometimes 6 times that price, depending on where i bought it, and the real kick is that i would get LESS. the standard english bottle of coke is 500ml. so while i love that everything is so cheap here, i'm going to find it painful readjusting to english prices... :-S utterly utter [
02:44 ]
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Im glad youre enjoying your Chinese shopping. With the prices being so reasonable it is not surprising that you would get carried away. Your expedition to find that special shop,must have been frustrating keep trying.Dad tells me I should send messages like this by email so I had better stop.Lots of love from Grandmaxxxxxxxxx
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