Shopping for Dog and Such

It doesn't take long living in a foreign country to get down to the basics, and there is nothing more basic than food.

While there are some choices that will strike many Westerners as odd, such as these tasty items (pictured at right) we found on the streets of Zhangjiajie, food is plentiful, healthy, and generally exciting in Hunan Province and all of China.

If you like fruits and vegetables, you're in for a real treat. And, if you like your spices, you'll be in heaven.

Yes, supermarkets with marked prices that are easy to understand are starting to make inroads throughout the PRC. But, most people still get the bulk of their diet from the ever-present street stalls selling produce apparently picked that morning. You have your choice of vegetables, and apples, pears, melons, bananas, as well as a variety of exotic fruit, that seems to always be in season.

Shopping, of course, is an adventure by Western standards. And, it's a big advantage to know what something is supposed to cost before you get to the bargaining stage. (If you have a guide or friend to help you, it's a piece of cake. Otherwise, you can hang around and try to figure out what others paid and hand the salesperson the same amount.)

Fortunately, relatively simple hand signals accompany numbers in China. So, even if you can't pronounce the numbers properly, you can motion with your fingers how many yuan (about 12 cents back then) you're willing to pay.

One (yi) can be accompanied by simply holding up your index finger. Then, two (er) by adding your middle finger. Just keep adding fingers for three (san), four (si), and your thumb for five (wu). Six (liu) is the thumb and pinky finger; seven (qi) is kind of like making a hand puppet with your thumb opposing the other four fingers; eight (ba) uses your thumb and index finger in kind of a reverse "loser" sign; nine (jiu) is a curled index finger, and 10 (shi) uses both index fingers to make a cross, like you are warding off a vampire.

Naturally, there are tones involved, and the Pinyin English letters used to approximate sounds for Chinese characters don't always have the sounds a native English speaker would expect. But, that's part of the challenge.

As with much of the world, whenever you're the outsider, there are people who will try to take advantage of you. Again, that's part of the learning curve.

I recall two times, in particular -- one funny and one that could have been problematical -- where people tried to overcharge me.

The first was after I had been there only a couple of days.

There are shoe shine vendors on many corners, and I stopped before an older woman and asked how much it cost (Duoshao qian?) She replied that is was one yuan.

So, she did her job and then asked for two yuan. I offered her one, and she pointed to each shoe, in turn, and said, "Yi yuan, hu yi yuan." I laughed, and, then, she laughed. It was worth a try on her part.

The other time happened after a fellow foreign teacher and I had several vegetable dishes at one of the street restaurants (which, by the way, are excellent and never once made me ill during my nine months in Zhangjiajie).

When it came time to pay the bill, the owner told us it was about three times what it should have been. I got a bit huffy and put my foot down. As we argued, a crowd grew.

Fortunately, I never found out if I would have risked jail over a dollar or two, because one of my students wandered by and smoothed things out. I agreed to pay a rather high price for the meal, but only about half of what he was asking. I then made a big show out of telling the onlookers how good the food was. So, everyone saved face.