"I only have a few hundred, will that be enough?"

In the last entry, I established that I converted $100 while I was making my torturous journey through the airport. For the time being, that money, about 560rmb, did nothing more than lend me some peace of mind; I at least had the cash to deal with problems, even if I didn't have the communication skills. Turns out, that money didn't even help much the next morning when I was looking for breakfast, but just having it gave me the confidence to look (I had a meeting to attend, and I spent too much time stumbling around asking, in broken Chinese, where I could find some food, so I never actually found food.)

But, finally, the time came to employ my Mao dollars (So named because of the image of the terrible dictator staring into the soul of anyone spending or recieving this legal tender.) The opportunity was lunch with the other English teachers; my first meal in China.

The other teachers are pretty cool people, and they were happy to bring me along as they had lunch together. I was happy just to get something to eat, having eaten nothing since an in-flight meal about 21 hours prior. But, as we approached the restaurant, I became a bit nervous. Just how expensive is it to eat out in China? I imagined only the wealthy could afford to pay someone to cook for them.

"Hey Maggie, how much does it generally cost to eat out?" I asked the teacher walking next to me, "I've only got a few hundred."

She laughed and said, in so many words, that was more than enough.

So that was the last I thought about the money until the end of the meal.

I mostly left the ordering up to the other teachers, since they had eaten here before and knew the menu. I noticed that they ordered about one entrée per person, and some bowls of rice, but when the food arrived, and it arrived one dish at a time, the servers would just put the dish in the middle of the table. Everyone ate out of the same bowl, sometimes transfering food to their plate, sometimes just eating straight off the serving dish. I wasn't too shocked by this, having heard about this kind of thing from travel shows, but what really surprised me was the water.

All the water was as hot as tea, nearly too hot to drink.

Of course, I heard, this is normal. Evidently, the Chinese think it's healthier to drink hot water. But, even more interesting is the fact that they perscribe it to treat most minor ailments. Apparently, drinking hot water is more powerful than either Advil of Chicken Noodle Soup. One of the teachers even reported that a friend who had a bicycle accident was told to drink more hot water to help with her injured foot.

After getting over the idea of hot water, I came to reach some kind of appreciation for it, and decided to try drinking hot water for a while to see if it helped digestion or something. But, one thing I still haven't come to appreciate is the total absence of bread. None of the dishes served in that meal had bread or were breaded, and even the noodles weren't doughy. It wasn't until the next day, yesterday actually, that I ate any bread, and that was in the bun of a western style chicken burger. As a sandwich loving American, and one with a taste for breaded deserts, I'm starting to seek out more bread-based foods, which I hear are sold in the foriegn-foods corner of a local supermarket.

So, the communal, breadless meal was washed down with hot water and it was time to pay the bill. Because every dish was split, the bill was divided evenly, and my part came to a total of 28rmb, or about $4.50. Mind you, this was a filling, multicourse sit-down meal in a nice resteraunt. And it cost less than a Big Mac Combo in America.

I have since discovered that this trend holds true with almost all food in this place. Sodas are regularly $0.50, entrees at resteraunts can start as low as $2, and I estimate that most grocery store products are 80% or less what they would cost in the States. And the food is good too; I've attached a picture of some really tasty, thin-wrapped dumblungs I got for $0.90 from a local café.

It's awesome that food is cheap, especially since I need to do some experimenting to figure out what I like to eat. And before you ask, the price difference cannot be chalked up to smaller portions; serving sizes are the same and the differential is too large to be covered by small change in portion anyway.

So, it turns out, my "few hundred" is plenty to live on until the first payday, even if I eat out every day and buy some supplies for my dorm. Reducing the posibility of financial crisis may not be especially intersting, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Anyway, as 'boring' as having enough cash may be, the students here definitely make up for it. But, I'll have to tell you about them next time.