Supermarkets and wine at 10 on a Sunday..

Last Sunday I had a fairly novel experience at my apartment complex. There is a supermarket here, right next to the school. It is basically a western style supermarket that stocks such delights as flora margarine and my favorite....decent cereal. Anyway, they had their official opening last Sunday and all the teachers went to support the store and look foreign. Fair enough you might think, but there is a small twist. The opening started at 10pm and about 5 minutes after we walked in we were presented with a sparkling fresh glass of.......wait for it.....red wine!! So there I was quaffing South Africa's finest and chatting meaningfully at just gone ten on a Sunday. Could only happen in China!! I can't say too much though as I did actually have two glasses.....

The DVD store :)

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of experiencing a DVD store here in Guangzhou, and trust me there weren't no HMV till boys to quiz about the latest releases, or infact even anything vaguely resembling my DVD buying experience in the UK. We went to this mall that only deals with computers and the like; we walk to where the DVD place is and a voice pipes up "you want DVD", upon our affirmative signal a shutter goes up to reveal a heaving mass of bodies pouring over the literally hundreds of DVD's in this "shop". We walk in and the shutter is immediately put back to its rightful place!! The joint isn't big, but every available inch of wall and floor space is covered with DVD's. You end up sorting through boxes of DVD's and ,when you feel tired, scanning the rows of displayed DVD's on the racks. After 30 mins of this you have a stack of discs big enough to choke a small elephant, that is when you know enough is enough and retreat to the "cash desk"; ironically it is infact a desk with a lot of cash behind it!! Anyways, I bought such gems as...... 1)EVERY bond film (in pretty fine looking boxset packaging I might add) for 15 quid!! 2) Curb your Enthusiasm Season 5 boxset 3) Das Boot 4) Citizen Kane and about 6 or 7 other sweet films. As the TV here is not too hot, I need a bank of quality films to dip into at any time. I think I am well on the way to achieving that!!