Shopping in the Village

I just got back from the little rural village right outside of the campus, with Brandon an easy going year-long. It's about a mile square and the main street through the town has vendors on both sides selling fruits, vegetables, clothes, whatever. Some of the vendors will lead you into a much larger shop nearby. The whole town is like a big yard sale. There is definitely a lack of hygienic standards but fortune favors the brave and so Brandon and I picked up some drinks and supplies at this one store while we were going through the street attracting the attention of virtually everyone. We stopped at a little stand where an older man was steaming dumplings for a really cheap price. With only a handle on basic Mandarin phrases we were able to get a really good steamed dumpling lunch with an orange soda for about 5 RMB, or less than a dollar American. Sitting in the front of the man's house turned diner, I reflected on how this was the China that few got to see outside the pages of National Geographic, here far from the bustle and boom of Beijing, reflects the true character of the Chinese people. Impoverished but hard-working sun-up to sun-down and friendly to a fault. We stopped in another little store, about the size of a small American mini-mart, where the walls and aisles were packed with every thing from laundry soap to soda to mystery meat on a stick. When our thick accents proved too much for the shopkeeper, she called her teenage daughter who spoke English very well and she helped us pick out what we wanted and get the right prices for without adding the "foreigner surcharge" that is common elsewhere. I think from now on I'll try to do my shopping in this little village rather than take the taxi all the way across ChangPing to go to Wal-Mart.