Wednesday, 16. September 2009
Random thoughts
acoflan, 18:22h
So I just ate lunch here on campus, at about 3 pm, which is about as far off of regular lunch hours as you can get. I walked into the one open cafeteria on campus and was greeted by darkness. Not one light was on. The escalators (yes, one of their dining halls has escalators) were turned off, and there was no movement. In America this would mean that the place was closed, but not in China. Out of a strong desire to save money (I assume), Chinese people are vigilant about wasted electricity. Our rooms have meters in them that show our monthly allotment. If you go over that you have to buy more. Anyway, I went to get some beef dumplings, which are 4 kuai for a dozen. For those of you not up on the exchange rate here, 4 kuai is about 66 cents.
Which leads me to the main point of this post. I cannot figure out the relationship between the prices of things here in China. In the US, I have very clear idea of what things should cost, and more specifically how expensive things are related to each other. But China's price relationships are just weird, which is compounded by the exchange rate giving me an advantageous economic position. For example, I went with my calligraphy teacher to by supplies the other day. We were choosing between two different brushes, one of which was 10 kuai, and another which was 18 kuai. According to my teacher, the 18 kuai was far superior, but the price was much higher. In my American my sense, the difference was only a dollar, but even to my China money sense it didn't make sense. A meal here is generally about 8 kuai, so why would he say that the higher quality brush was that much more expensive, particularly if it would last me a lot longer?
On that note, if you are going to come to China you have to develop a Chinese sense of money, at least to some extent. When I first got here, I was doing the exchange rate in my head and saying to myself, "Oh, that's only 3 usd, no problem!" This is a recipe for disaster. Sure, there are some instances when you can use this to your advantage, but you'll save a lot of money in the long run if you realize that you could be paying 3 kuai for the same thing you were going to pay 3 usd for.
That's all for now!
Which leads me to the main point of this post. I cannot figure out the relationship between the prices of things here in China. In the US, I have very clear idea of what things should cost, and more specifically how expensive things are related to each other. But China's price relationships are just weird, which is compounded by the exchange rate giving me an advantageous economic position. For example, I went with my calligraphy teacher to by supplies the other day. We were choosing between two different brushes, one of which was 10 kuai, and another which was 18 kuai. According to my teacher, the 18 kuai was far superior, but the price was much higher. In my American my sense, the difference was only a dollar, but even to my China money sense it didn't make sense. A meal here is generally about 8 kuai, so why would he say that the higher quality brush was that much more expensive, particularly if it would last me a lot longer?
On that note, if you are going to come to China you have to develop a Chinese sense of money, at least to some extent. When I first got here, I was doing the exchange rate in my head and saying to myself, "Oh, that's only 3 usd, no problem!" This is a recipe for disaster. Sure, there are some instances when you can use this to your advantage, but you'll save a lot of money in the long run if you realize that you could be paying 3 kuai for the same thing you were going to pay 3 usd for.
That's all for now!
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