Beer is cheap. I got wasted on Qingdao for almost no money. The only place cheaper to drink would be Manila, in my experience. You just want to make sure you discriminate enough to avoid getting knock off swill. 'Zhi yao zhong guo ren xiang he de pi jiu' is a good phrase to remember to avoid getting scummy brew.CFFJR wrote: Flake, can I bother you to tell us about China? I'd love to go there one day.
The girls are kind of disappointing. I was never one for cat houses as is (STD's scared me more than they scared most of my ship mates - they were the ones lining up to see the hospital corpsman in the morning, though) but even the regular Chinese ladies were kind of hit and miss. And it wasn't like I was in Monkey Ass province or something like that. This was Qingdao, not too far from Beijing. Then again, I never developed the yellow fever like some dudes so maybe my standards for Asian ladies are too high.
The food is good but the same rule applies to it as does the booze - learn a little chinese and avoid getting treated like a yang gui zi. Otherwise you'll get the gout and hate life.
The air quality sucks. The Chinese are not paying much attention to their environment in their desperate bid to catch up to the West. I'm not sure if they're thinking this one through...
Chinese merchants are crafty as all get out. If you feel like you might be getting ripped off, you probably are. But if you don't speak Chinese, your chances of haggling are nil. You'll just come off as a whiny tourist. So just look for a passing police man and ask him to help you shop. You'll get bad ass prices that way.
The night life is not bad at all.
To be honest, I only visited the main land once. I am much more familiar with Hong Kong - and that's a totally different animal.
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