More amazing stuff on my latest venture to China.
There is a local Wal-mart type store called "N-Mart."
N-mart is set up much like a Wal-mart superstore. Lots of cheap clothes, appliances, housewares, etc., even a greeter at the front. You take an escalator up to the 2nd floor and they have an enormous supermarket.
2 days ago I made friends with the greeter, a lovely 18 year old named "Songdanna" speaks minimal English, so I made a date with her to have dinner. She said to meet her at N-mart at 5pm tommorrow (which was yesterday).
So yesterday I go to N-mart, arriving about 4;30pm and then decide to buy a few groceries. I picked up an enormous bag of my favorite vegetable, snow-peas, for all of 1.5 Yuan (about 18 cents). I'll cook that up in the hotel room today.
In the butcher section, sure enough, alongside the pork and beef and chicken, they've got skinned DOG carcasses. Even a couple of PUPPIES. They've even got 2 dog heads encased in the styroform and cellophane packages like you would find a steak in the USA at the supermarket. Being fascinated with the macabre as I am, I was fascinated. Tommorrow I am going to go back and take photos.
Oh yeah, the dog heads were 5.00 yuan each (about US 60-cents). I guess you eat the brains or make them into soup or SOMETHING. God knows!
So at the appointed time, I went down to the entrance to find my date, Miss Songdanna. Beautiful eyes and smile. I figured out that she was just taking a break from work, so we had a dinner in the employee cafeteria. A stainless steel tray piled high with rice and spicy Yunnanese food for all of 3 Yuan each. So the entire date cost me 6 Yuan, about US 75-Cents.
But unfortunately Songdanna already has a Chinese boyfriend, and she apparently just wants me to teach her Engrish. ah well....
Jason