Prices

2 Sep 06

There is not much to report from today. I convinced Zeneta to go outside with me and we went shopping.

We got Michelle to come along with us and the three of us hit several shops in an attempt to get the things that Zeneta had on her list. Instead of starting with the large shops, we made an attempt to shop at several of the smaller places.

Although I do not need it at this time, I did see (or at least I think I saw) a place to get my hair cut. It seemed to be identifiable by the sign out side that had a picture of a large pair of scissors and the barber-style chairs inside.

After shopping we returned to our apartment and read for a while. As I looked at the book I was reading, I saw one of the reasons that the US has trouble competing in this marketplace. The book, Mario Puzo's, The Fortunate Pilgrim, it cost 67 Yuan. This comes out to a price, after conversion, which is very close to the cover price in USD. The trouble with this is that the economy here is different and people do not earn as much in converted dollars. It also bears mention that normal, non-imported product, prices also reflect this lower price scale. As a couple of examples: a large banquet dinner for eight people, with many leftovers, cost 260 Yuan, Daily groceries typically cost about 10 Yuan, and we do not have the local knowledge to shop cheap, a breakfast of noodles, at a street cafe, cost about 1-4 Yuan, and our bicycles cost about 450 Yuan for two, better than average, bicycles. With this in mind, 67 Yuan for a book is an extravagance.

We still do not have our Internet enabled computer fixed. The silly part is that all I want out of it is the information out of IP config. Then I will probably put it in another room or set it to running some distributed computing and remove the monitor and keyboard.

Zeneta did go over to Michelle¡¯s apartment and used her computer for a bit in order to send messages to people in order to let them know that we are in China and doing fine.