Countdown Day 2: Sweet Potato Guy

Two treats are especially popular here: baked sweet potatoes and steamed ears of corn. Both can be bought pretty much any time of day from street vendors. When you buy a potato or corn, the vendor puts in in a very thin semi-transparent plastic bag (what are called "food bags" around here) and then you can munch on it without having to touch it with your "bus hands" (i.e., hands that are incredibly germ-ridden from being in public, holding onto the handles on the bus, etc. Remember, most public Chinese restrooms don't have soap or hot water).

The photo here is of one potato seller. He's got his wares laid out on top of the drum that he uses to cook the potatoes. When business isn't good at one location, he just pushes his potato cart to a new one. Pretty nifty.

Oh, and when people eat the potatoes here, they don't eat the skin. They peel it off piece by piece and just eat the insides.

Conspicuous Consumption

This week the college got some beverage vending machines delivered to campus. If you're curious, the machines stock Coca-Cola products and canned coffee drinks (Nescafe). The person in charge of arranging the machines sent out this announcement, which I want to commend for its forthrightness.

______________________

To: All staff
From: Mr. Director
Subject: Vending machines

Dear all,

Please be informed that cold drinks in vending machines are ready for use. They are located outside Room E207 and B201, B202 open space. We are required to consume 1,200 units per month/each machine to qualify to keep them here, so please make well use of these machines.

Sincerely,

Mr. Director
______________________

Given the nature of this place, I keep expecting a schedule to appear with required "voluntary" purchasing days.

Organic Gardening

Fruits and veggies are pretty cheap in China, much cheaper than in the U.S. I can go to the local wet market and get sack fulls of fruits-n-veggies for mere dollars. Here is a photo of one of the markets I shop at (this is the veggie part; fruits are sold in a separate section. Notice the 3-person family on the scooter):


Even better, by and large, the local Chinese growers use what we would recognize as "organic" methods of gardening. Part and parcel of this is their use of night soil. Night soil is a euphemistic synonym for human feces:

"Night soil" is produced as a result of a waste management system in areas without community infrastructure such as a sewage treatment facility, or individual septic disposal. In this system of waste management, the human faeces are collected in solid form.

Now, aside from some of the health concerns of such a practice, I personally think that this is a good use of something that generally goes unused today in the U.S. But I did wonder how this was collected. Then, on a walk through Jin Ding, I found out.

See this dude in the picture?

He's squatting next to a manhole and has slid aside its cover. Rushing through the pipes below is all the waste water -- including water from the village's flushable toilets. You can't see it in this photo, of course, but he was using a big ladle to scoop the poo-filled water (well, it was more like poo soup by this point) into a bucket that's sitting behind the cement block on his left.

I do wonder if some locals still use the 'old school' method of collection (i.e., the honey bucket). I imagine so since a lot of locals don't even have a bathroom, let alone a porcelain toilet -- in their homes.

I'm also wondering if this isn't an untapped U.S. market, especially with the economy being so poor and with organic foods being so popular. Who wants to invest in my start-up: Organic Humanure Fertilizer?

Saturday Carnage

Today ate lunch at Mr. Pizza and encountered the usual carnage that is a weekly occurrence in JinDing. A freshly skinned dog was being prepped, and a donkey had been cut open and gutted on the sidewalk. The whole scene was pretty graphic. This time we decided to go home and get the camera to document this. By the time we got back, here's what we saw:

1. This donkey tethered to a tree outside the restaurant:

2. Its friend, already butchered and hanging from meat hooks. From left to right: donkey legs, donkey head, dog, pig, pig.

Only half of the dog remained when we returned, so maybe it was already being eaten. You can see from the what was left of the belly area that it was female.

When electronic translators fail . . .

. . . this is the result (seen on a beverage menu at a local coffee house):


I am not proud that this makes me laugh, but I cannot deny that it did.

Swinging in the Breeze

Because you can never have too many pictures of raw meet hanging from hooks in the fine Zhuhai air, here is another one. If you look closely at the piece on the right, you can see the bottom of the animal's foot/hoof (not sure what kind of critter it was).

This was taken outside a local restaurant; this is their meat storage area. They slaughter critters daily and then keep the carcass chunks here and use as needed. Nifty.

Asiannaise

Needless to say, Hellman's mayonnaise is in short supply here. Even when you do find it, it's not real Hellman's, it's more like Miracle Whip. Thankfully, I have a international supplier for Hellman's (a.k.a. Mom).

When the Hellman's runs low, we resort to eating other types of egg-oil emulsions. For the cheesy-creepy factor you can't beat Kewpie Mayonnaise:


Kewpie Mayonnaise is native to Japan, but common in China (in fact the back of the package states that Kewpie in China is a "Chinese-Japanese joint venture"). There are four kinds of Kewpie Mayonnaise available in our local markets: Regular (pictured); sweet; half-fat sweet; thousand island dressing-style. Here in China, people eat Mayonnaise on things that we wouldn't, like fruit. Whenever you order fruit salad in a restaurant, it comes with some kind of mayonnaise product on it (Can you imagine eating watermelon covered in 'nnaise? How about apple? Or maybe Kiwi?)

Kewpie Mayonnaise packaging takes a little getting used to. It comes in a squeezie container or a little bag. But as you can see from this photo, the container isn't very sturdy.One benefit of this packaging is that when the mayonnaise gets low, you can just sort of ring out the container.

The flavor isn't fab -- the regular tastes like Tartar Sauce without the pickle pieces. And even the regular (non-sweet) mayo is much sweeter than U.S. mayo is.

But the best part is that each bottle of Kewpie Mayonnaise (except the thousand-island dressing product) comes with -- you guessed it -- a Kewpie doll. Here is one, hermetically sealed in protective plastic:



Mo is always happy when we bring home Kewpie Mayonnaise -- his entourage is growing at a nice clip:

Fried Duck's Nude

***This here is a guest post by our resident cowboy, D***

Just down the hill from the college where RB and I teach is a place
called "The International Center." It's something of an all-purpose
weigh station (e.g., hotel, restaurants, gift shop, etc.) for business
people and teachers working down at the end of this very long dusty
road. What follows is a selection of items available on their
"Western-Style Food Menu."*

Soup. How about starting off with some "Threw Teeth Hits Seafood" or perhaps "French Onion Pumpkin Soup." I'm not sure what the first one is, but doesn't that second one sound tasty?! And then there's the "Example Soup." We have often speculated that this one is made up of various leftover ingredients from the kitchen.

Snacks. Need an appetizer? Why not try a "Soya Duck Kidney" or perhaps "Chicken Feet Thai Style?" Another option is "Bone with Salt & Pepper." Yum! One name had my dad laughing so hard that I thought he might need medical attention - "Fried Duck's Nude."

Seafood. In the mood for seafood? One choice is something called "Roasted Epinephelus Portugal Style." As for what this is, well, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe you're feeling a bit adventurous. If so, then the "Pan-fry Jewfish Vanilla" just might hit the spot.

Roasted. So, you're more of a meat eater. Well, you could order an "Angus Pig Redeye Steak." Do you suppose that this is pork? beef? mystery meat? There's also the [less confusing?] "US Cow Redeye Steak."

Pasta Specialties. If you go oodles over noodles then maybe the "Baked Tuna Spaghetti" will have you salivating. Don't forget to ask for some "XO Sauce Catsup" to go with your "Fried Spagherri." Or, for a wild time, you might try "Malaysia Fried Wet Hoer Fun!"

* Note: The restaurant has two different menus, but you do not get to choose your menu. One is for Chinese people and the other (with much higher prices) is given to foreigners, westerners, etc. This is common practice here and is generally referred to -- by foreigners -- as "the foreigner markup."

Donkeys, dogs, and baboons, oh my!

It figures that I'd leave my camera at home today since we saw more bizarre things in four hours than we've seen our entire time here.

It all started when we went to Jin Ding for lunch at Mr. Pizza. Jin Ding is a little village a few bus stops north of us. When we got off the bus and crossed the street, we saw a donkey tethered to a tree in front of a restaurant where there's usually chickens on leashes. I'm pretty used to seeing live chickens tied up to all sorts of things, but donkeys are rarer. It was cute -- dark grey with floppy ears and a black nose. Dwight and I remarked to each other that it didn't look very happy.

We continued on to Mr. Pizza and had a tasty meal. Afterwards, we walked back past the tree where the donkey had been tethered only to discover that during our meal, the donkey had been slaughtered and was being skinned and gutted on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. It looked bigger dead than alive, and three men were bent over the carcass scraping all the fur off.

This was such a startling sight that we almost overlooked the skinned and gutted dog carcass hanging from a meat hook at a little stand in front of the restaurant. The stand was being used by the restaurant's staff as a meat prep area. The dog still had fur on its head, so it was easy to see what its face would have looked like had it been alive. The meat hooked was jammed through the back of its neck, and its face was staring out toward the busy street. The restaurant worker was busy chopping up another dog carcass into bite-sized chunks.

This scene was enough to make us stop and stare (where we, of course, provided staring material for the locals). Just as we regained ourselves and started to walk away, a pick up truck pulled up to the curb with a delivery for the restaurant: another dog, still alive, in a cage. It was a white dog, medium sized, with dirty fur. Just an average dog around here. Short-haired. Pointy ears. Cute doggie face. A woman from the restaurant tried to pry it out of its cage, but it was resisting. It was scared, and kept trying to evade her grasp by curling itself up in a little ball. It seemed to know that it was going to end up stir-fried.

All of this made our lunch -- which included animal products -- sit heavy in our stomachs. But none of these sights (except us waiguoren) even elicited a second glance from the locals.

We went our next destination, a small store called the Zhuhai Deli that sells imported foods. We'd never been there before, but had heard about it on an expat website. There, we able to stock up on goodies like refried beans, olives, and bleu cheese -- all things that are unavailable in the rest of Zhuhai. We paid a pretty penny for this stuff, but familiar food is worth it.

Then, on the way home from the store, we saw something that even surprised the Chinese people on the bus with us: a man walking down the street with three baboons on leashes. He was just walking them like you'd walk your dog. I don't think that baboons are common around here, and it wasn't clear why he had them, but it was funny to hear all the Chinese passengers say "ohhhhhhhhh!" when they saw it.

Perhaps the baboons were off to the stew pot, too. Who knows. This is China, after all.

Fresh Fish

The wet market is the center of a lot of village activity. It's the place where most everyone comes to buy fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, and assorted other items. The market is set up in a big square. Most of it is under an open-sided covering -- kind of like at a state fair. Inside, the walkways are lined with troughs that capture all the liquid produced from slaughtering and from hosing the place down. Outside, vendors put their wares on the ground flea-market style.

On Saturdays, the wet market is full of live chickens -- all the chicken vendors come to town and line up their wares on the back of the market, forming what I call "the Hall of Doomed Chickens." On other days, chickens and other fowl are sold, but not in the same quantity. This picture is kind of blurry, but you can see that someone is buying a chicken for dinner. After D snapped this picture, the vendor neatly twisted the chickens's neck to kill it. I haven't been brave enough to buy a chicken yet, but I probably will before we leave China.

Mondays are fish days, when the fish-
mongers take over the open area outside the main market. The pavement is covered with shallow containers of water filled with living critters and piles of freshly killed sea creatures of all stripes. When you buy a fish, the vendor will kill it for you and clean it. The men in the photo to the right are cleaning a fish for the person standing in front of them. The square blue containers you see have living critters in them.

Steamed noodles from the village

One of my favorite things to do here is walk through the local village. Even when I'm completely sick of being here, I always enjoy the craziness -- the sheer difference that this village offers.

Yesterday, I set out early to the wet market. I wanted to visit my regular fruit lady and stock up on clementines, and I wanted to get some potatoes and onions for a potato salad.

One the way, I needed something to eat, so I stopped a a street side restaurant. All of the cooking took place on the sidewalk. Patrons could then choose to eat under a roof or out in the open. The food is my favorite kind here -- simple. The cook scooped a bit of flour-water from the red bucket on the ground and dumped into one of the trays that she took from the steamer. Then she added a tiny scoop of ground pork from the metal bowl on the table, some bean sprouts. One one tray, she added an egg. All of this steamed briefly, and then she scraped it into a container (I got mine to go) and added a little broth. The result was freshly steamed noodles, to which I added a bit of hot chili paste. Tas-tee.

Street Food

The crackdown on unlicensed food vendors didn't last long. This is good news. One of the more interesting aspects of China are the impromptu noodles stands and whatnot that one finds on most village street corners in our neck of the woods.

Plus, I like the food that the vendors sell -- I'm sure that eating it is strengthening my immune system. We usually stop here for sustenance after consuming a few refreshing beverages the expat bar across the street (an over-priced Brit-owned place called The Old Chinese Junk. Its main virtue is that it's within walking distance of our compound).

I snapped these photos the other night after we placed our order at our "regular" vendor. We got grilled eggplant, lamb (I think), chicken, fish (the whole fish, head and all), and sausage. If you ask, the cook will coat everything in a spicy MSG-chili mixture that I love.

Close-up of pre-cooked food:


Adding the spicy coating:

Chicken: the New Beef

Today we ate at a new place for lunch today, a little eatery near the BNU dorms.

We sat down and a server came over to us and immediately asked, "Do you want a hamburger?" This was kind of funny because since we're foreigners, and she assumed we were from the U.S., she also assumed that we would want burgers. Some of my students think that that's all that U.S. people eat.

Anyway.

D did want a burger and enthusiastically accepted her offer. They had two sizes, she told us, "big" and "little".

I, however, wanted something a bit lighter. Since the menu was all in characters, I tried to ask her about other food.

Me: Do you have noodles?
Her: No, but we will in 3 days.
Me: Do you have something with meat and vegetables in it?
Her: We have chicken and we have cow and we have vegetables too.
Me: Can you bring me something with vegetables and chicken?
Her: Yes.

It was fabulous that our server spoke English -- not a lot (as you can tell from the dialogue), but infinitely more English than we speak Chinese. And it was kind of funny that she referred to the meat by their "animal" names, something that I do just to make a point sometimes (ex., it's not a hamburger, it's a ground up cow).

When my meal came, I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't a weird concoction of things, it was a scoop of rise with sauteed greens and a seasoned, broiled chicken leg.

D has a surprise of a different sort: his hamburger ended up being a fried chicken patty with sweet mayo (that's the only kind they have here) on a sesame seed bun. No, the kitchen hadn't made a mistake. Apparently, a "hamburger" in China often refers to chicken sandwiches:

The Chinese word for hamburger (hanbao) often refers to all sandwiches containing cooked meat, regardless of the meat's origin. This includes chicken burgers, as KFC is very popular in China.

Of course, this incident set of an hour-long dialogue in which we tried to hash out the definition of "burger." D insisted that a true burger must be made of at least 51% ground cow beef. My main criteria was only that it be made of ground meat.

Any thoughts?

Macau Redeux

On Saturday we visited Macau again. This time our pace was a bit more leisurely.

I will spare you the details of our journey over. Suffice it to say that we tried to take a recommended "shortcut" and got a bit mixed up. And at one point were were offered a ride to our destination by a "simple" man (think: Cantonese-speaking Sling Blade) whose taxi was a bicycle with a wooden cart attached to it. (An aside -- I totally wanted to take a ride in the thing; D was the one who declined. Anyway).

Macau has a cool landscape. Because it was established by the Pourtugese, a good deal of the architecture is European. There are old churches and things around, and a lot of the street signs are in Pourtegese, which is infinitely easier to understand than Chinese. Macau also looks a lot like Kowloon with its twisty hilly streets. I kept thinking of it as a "snack-sized" Hong Kong all day.

Macau street:


Here is a photo of the ruins of St. Paul's. An info site for Macau tourism says this about the ruins:

Designed by an Italian Jesuit, and, with the assistance of Japanese Christian artisans who had fled from feudal persecution in Nagasaki, the church was built from 1602 to 1637. In 1835, a fire burned it to the ground, leaving only the façade, the staircase and portions of a wall. It remained unchanged until a restoration was undertaken and completed in the summer of 1991.

In the culinary world, Macau is known for its egg tarts. Here is what a Portugeuse egg tart looks like. Notice that the top of the tart is much darker than a regular Chinese egg tart:


This is D after tasting the egg tart (he didn't like it very much, so I got to eat mine and the remains of his):


I also sampled some tasty cookies from this woman, who took little hunks of dough, flattened them in these super hot presses, and then dumped them into a basket underneath. The result tasted like pizelles (those Italian cookies) without the anise.


While Macau is know for its tasty food, it is perhaps best as the gambling capital of China -- it's the only place in China where gambling is legal. Until recently, one Chinese dude had a monopoly on all the betting action. But now, some other investors have broken into the market. For example, there a Sands casino in Macau. And the newest addition is The Venetian. It's not as impressive as the one in Las Vegas, but it does have a Fatburger, which we made a visit to:

We did do more than just eat all day, but you wouldn't know it from the photos that I took.

That is a tasty burger. . .

D enjoying a Freshness Burger "Classic WW Burger" in Kowloon. If this were a newspaper article, the caption would read: D Declares: "Best Burger I've Ever Had!"



He did say that, and he was serious.

The Classic WW Burger is Freshness' biggest burger, but it's no match for a burger-deprived D and his giant Irish hands. Freshness Burger is a Japanese burger joint -- and I do have to admit that it's pretty fabulous. I think that it has to do with the beef they use -- 100% Australian non-hormone open-range cow. It's very, very tasty.

More from Gourmet Wu

I haven't been talking much about Gourmet Wu lately because he's been out of town on a business trip. For two weeks I've suffered without my thrice-weekly prepared meals (eating too many cups of instant noodles and not enough "real" food).

Fortunately, the Chef is back in town. And tonight's dinner is an extra-special treat: meat balls (pig), mashed sweet potato, and salad. The meat balls are really tasty. I might boil up some pasta (Barilla, which costs me about 4 USD a pack) and eat the meat balls on top of it.

Kickin' it old-school

See that can of Coca-Cola on the right? It's Chinese coke -- pretty much indistinguishable from U.S. Coca-Cola except for one thing: the version 1.0 pop-top. Over here, beer and soda (or "pop" if you're from Western PA) come in cans with those sharp-edged pain-in-the-ass pull-tabs.

There really is a difference between these pull-tabs and the more modern tabs. These old-school tabs test one's dexterity. When we first arrived here, I was the designated beer opener because D couldn't get his cans open without 1) breaking of the tab before removing it completely or 2) spilling beer from using too much force when pulling the tab off. From all the practice I've gotten these last few months, my technique is smooth. I can hold a can and remove the tab with the same hand I'm using to hold the can. A one-handed operation.

D and I were trying to remember why they stopped using these kinds of tabs in the U.S. Anyone got any thoughts about it?

How to Live in China and Not Eat Chinese Food

Ominous title for a post, I know, especially since we live in China and are pretty much at the mercy of Chinese food. This wouldn't be so bad if we lived in a province known for good food (e.g., Hunan). But we don't. So D and I have found ways around The System. Our "ways around" includes large infusions of US-style fast food (which I in no way feel guilty about eating as it is by no means the worst health risk here).

Exhibit number 1: KFC redeux. So, you know that we already visited KFC and were completely underwhelmed by it. The chain has redeemed itself in our eyes -- or perhaps we're just more used to the chaos of the place -- because during our last KFC visit (this past Saturday), I had a good time.

The place was packed. They always are. KFC reigns supreme here as the Fast Food King. I managed to find us a seat while D ordered our food. His task was no small feat given the fact that while there were 60 or so people waiting to order food, there was no line in evidence. It's all "elbow, push, move - elbow, push, move" to the counter. I suspect that D's size gave him an advantage in this regard.

He arrived at the table, triumphant, holding aloft a tray laden with a bucket of chicken and a litre of some Pepsi (Yuk, but at least I could read the label) product. I should note that he was only able to find me in the crowd because I guided him in via cell phone.

Photographic evidence:


We were surrounded by children celebrating their birthdays, and in the background "Happy Birthday" was playing -- in Chinese, of course. It was kind of surreal -- like being trapped inside of the "Small World" ride at Disney.

Exhibit #2: McDonald's Chinese-speaking success. I have no photographic evidence for this, but it nevertheless needs to be recorded. D's successfully ordered a large coke at McDonald's, but instead of doing it by pointing to the picture menu (the menu they hand to stupid foreigners like us), he ordered it in Chinese. And the workers understood! Totally cool. We spend entirely too much time at McDonald's, and I love, love, love it there.

Exhibit #3: Pizza and hamburgers. We got turned onto a new pizza place by a colleague, an expat from Atlanta (he is known in these parts as "the Colonel"). The place, called Dynamics Pizza, is a chain. The franchise we visited is owned by a South African. Here's what we ate:


That's Carribean Chicken Pizza, a burger, and a Coke. The pizza was serviceable (kind of like Digiorno; I've had to exponentially lower my standards for pizza since coming here. I am millions of miles away from a real slice of pizza [a.k.a. New York Style]). The burger was a Chinese-style burger in that it wasn't pure beef -- tasted like a beef, pork, chicken mix. But at least it looked like a real burger. And we could order our food in English.

Exhibit #4 -- Fried fish balls from a street vendor.

Okay, so these aren't Western, but they're not really Chinese, either. They remind me more of Japanese food. They're a mix of cabbage and onions, fried in little pans, covered in shaved bonito and wasabi, and served up with these stabby little chopsticks. They cost 2.5RMB for three, and they are tas-tee.

Exhibit #5: Gourmet Wu (of course).

The point of all of this is that we are finding ways to enjoy Chinese food in moderation without having it forced down our throats.

Of course, I would still kill for Mexican food (damn you, brother, and your all-you-can-eat Mexican buffets ;-)

Authentic Chinese Food . . . Or is it??

Do instant Ramen noodles and Spam sound like "real" Chinese food to you? I know quite a few people who would argue with someone who said that "real" Chinese people (admittedly a tricky term) don't eat this sort of food. Rather, they eat some sort of "authentic" Chinese dishes that you can only find if you go to China. Or Chinatown.

I am here to tell you that these naysayers are wrong.

Sometimes we encounter food here that makes us laugh because it's (1) it's so familiar and (2) it totally goes against what a lot of people think that Chinese really eat.

Take for example this dish:



It is exactly what it looks like. Ramen noodles (the instant kind) and Spam. D ordered this at a restaurant near our campus. The deluxe version of this dish includes a fried egg on top.

Indeed, there are lots and lots and lots of things to eat in China that you can only find in China or Chinatown. BUT, this kind -- instant noodles with everyday topping -- isn't rare here. Below is a photo of me sampling a similar dish (I swear that the noodles were Maruchan brand, they tasted so familiar!) in the southern part of the city (mine has the fried egg):



To my left in the photo is the "green vegetable" (i.e., whatever green vegetable the kitchen has on hand) that is served with meals in China. In this part of the world, a meal just ain't a meal without some sort of green vegetable dish (never mind that most of the time they seem to serve stir-fried lettuce, which has fewer nutritional benefits than water).

What's most interesting to me about this type of noodle dish is that it's both familiar to me and to the locals here. So, this kind of food is both foreign to China and local to this area. That is, this kind of food is real Chinese food. Real Chinese people eat it. Real Chinese people cook it. So, the next time you're eating Ramen noodles and spam (or hot dogs or whatever), and someone tells you it isn't "authentic," you can tell them that you know better.

My Kingdom for Dunkin' Donuts Coffee with Cream and Sugar

Before we made our great journey across the sea, we were warned by many sources that "real coffee is hard to find in China. All you can find is instant. And if you do find real coffee, it's terrible."

This isn't exactly true.

They were right that instant coffee is what you commonly find in that you can find instant everywhere -- at grocery stores, at restaurants, people's homes. So, if you're dying for coffee -- so much so that you'll drink something that's a close relative of real coffee, you won't be disappointed. Judging from what I've seen, most people who drink coffee in China drink instant coffee. And, they usually drink some variation of "Milk Coffee" -- instant coffee that has sugar and powdered milk already mixed into it. Instant's entre into the market was probably made easier by the fact that to make it, you "just add hot water," and since all of the water coolers around here have a hot water tap, you're good to go (and since you can't drink tap water here, water coolers are everywhere).

Packages of real coffee (what people here call "ground coffee") are hard to come by. The big international grocery store where we shop only sells one kind of ground coffee. ("International" means that they sell some non-Chinese things, like Land-o-Lakes cheddar cheese.) I've not seen ground coffee for sale anywhere else yet. You definitely can't just run down to the local market and buy this -- they'd only have instant.

You can, however, order real coffee at some restaurants. But this is what you get when you it:


Butter pat used to give you a sense of scale

This is about 4 oz. of coffee. Having been raised on the teat of "free refills" and venti Starbucks, this dinky thing (which I've started referring to as "European sized coffee") is simply not enough. But it has to be. Because coffee here is expensive. And that is what we weren't prepared for.

The coffee in the photo above costs around 2.5 USD (depending on the place where you order it). And that's the cheap coffee (not instant, but the cheapest real coffee on the menu). That means that a cup of coffee is at least as expensive as most meals on restaurant menus. When D and I order coffee with our meal, it doubles the bill's total, and more than doubles it if we order a second cup. It would be cheaper for us to drink beer with our meals (a can of beer is around 30-50 cents USD).

Also, making real coffee is labor intensive. There are no coffee pots at restaurants**; instead, each cup is made by hand using a vacuum method of preparation. This is what the contraption looks like before the water and coffee come into contact with each other:



This method produces a tasty cup of coffee. But most days I just miss crappy drive-through coffee in paper cups (especially, I am embarrassed to admit, Dunkin' Donuts coffee).

Needless to say, the majority of the people in our city (1) don't drink real coffee and (2) probably couldn't afford to even if they wanted to. Even the instant coffee is pretty pricey (and by pricey, I mean it costs about the same as instant coffee in the US, which means that it's expensive here).

So, now you know: Real coffee is hard to find and insanely expensive, but it tastes good if you can get it. Instant coffee is easy to find and also expensive. Of course, the situation may be different in big cities. Our town of 1 million people is small by China's standards.

Notes:
* Coffee shops here are not really coffee shops. They are over-priced restaurants that just happen to feature coffee as the beverage of choice. They think you're a bit weird when you just order coffee. They also serve all kinds of bizzarro coffee drinks. Here I am drinking something called "Noble Lady Coffee" ('cause, ya know, I'm am noble ;-) Note the extended pinky:



And check out the swanky interior of this coffee shop (called U.B.C. Coffee):


This place is huge, and in addition to serving coffee
and food, also serves a full bar

** Coffee pots/makers are hard to come by at stores, too. And expensive. And kind of crappy.