Shanghai China Snippets Observations about living in Shanghai and China in general

Bread Prices – Two Ways of Dealing With It.

The price of almost everything has been going up in China, including the price of grain.

I buy my bread in 2 places and both shops have approached the price increase differently.

In the Portman bakery (inside the City supermarket) the ciabattas have a slightly smaller square cm size, and are half as thick as before. You can almost call it a ciabatta crust. The price is the same, 18 Rmb. For reference sake, the price of the same ciabatta was once 12 Rmb in 2005 in the Portman Bakery

In Paul’s they have decided to increase the price instead of halving the bread. A white bread that previously set you back 18 Rmb now costs you 22 Rmb. An increase of more than 22%.

Personally I prefer Paul’s approach. I have to pay more but at least you can still call it a bread.

Yesterday I was baffled when the sales lady at my local Alldays convenience store told me the price of a 5 liter water container. The day before it was priced more than 5% less. She said that all prices in the store had increased. It’s inflation galore at the moment.

For the majority of the Chinese this cuts hard in their budgets and I don’t see it stop anytime soon.

Sexybeijing has an nice item on the rising of the prices.

[youtube width=”408″ height=”360″]zIVcJKwudMo[/youtube]

For a change I was listening to the Chinese news. Well to be honest, my wife was watching and I was playing the computer as I heard something about IP.

I said something smart or at least tried, “Nice, another propaganda item about how China is fiercely protecting Intellectual Property” but I was wrong.. again:).

In their monopolistic wisdom China Telecom has decided to, yes, increase the prices of international IP phone calls. China Unicom and China Mobile apparently preceded them (I missed that part as I don’t listen too much to the Chinese news:) and in a non-competitive sector you’ll follow suit if you have another chance at more profit.

I always thought the whole idea behind IP telephony is/was that it would make communication cheaper. I guess raising the prices is a Chinafied interpretation.

I don’t know with how much the prices will go up. It will definitely be less airtime for my 30 kuai ip card with a value of 100 kuai.

Honestly, I wouldn’t know as we don’t keep a dog and also don’t intend to do so as space is limited in Shanghainese apartments and the last thing I’ll ever consider is getting a dog smaller than a rat. So, no, no dog for me. But for China’s nouveaux riches the Tibetan Mastiff is apparently a status symbol worth paying more, as it’s a rare breed. (more…)

My second wisdom tooth was pulled yesterday.

Last time it was in the upper half of my jaw (to be exact on the right side) and it cost me 300 Rmb.

This time it was the lower half (left side) and it cost me double.

I have no inkling why there is such a difference as the work seemed the same.

It’s still much cheaper than Holland though.

Buying fake dvd’s in the same place for more than 2 years is mind boggling. The price of dvd’s we pay is 7 kuai for dvd-5 quality and if you buy a tv-series we pay 8 Rmb per disk.

Nothing new and nothing exciting. Once you have agreed a price, unless the dvd market becomes a seller’s market, it makes sense to keep it like that. It stops the energy sucking bargaining process and it’s more time efficient.

But not when the middle aged woman is in charge. Then suddenly she wants a hell of lot more kuai per dvd. Who cares you have been there last week, who cares that you buy a lot. There’s one thing on her mind. To rather have that extra kuai now and lose future sales than having a happy returning customer.

My advice, if the middle aged woman is sitting behind the desk, don’t buy and walk on. If the old man is sitting there, buy. They have a great variety of dvd’s but please ditch the …..

In Europe you have 1 Euro Shops, in the US, the 1 Dollar shops and in China the 1 Yuan shop

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I wonder if they all sell the same stuff.