Who needs signal lights?

I had a driver pick me up today in order to go the RT-Mart. It is in the heart of downtown Xiamen and I guess the place to shop for items. I observed that the lines dividing the highway into lanes are merely a suggestion, which may or may not be practiced. The cars are not that big, certainly no mini-vans or big SUVs. The road is shared by people on bikes, electric bikes and mopeds. Apparently, helmets are optional which is a debatable measure considering that you can be driving along and mopeds can be coming in the opposite direction to the right of you!

I’m not sure why signal lights are installed in the cars because nobody uses them. The drivers seem to nudge the car out of the way and move into the lane. People straddle lanes all the time and I guess if someone seems insistent on moving into your lane, you honk your horn. Why signal when you can honk?

Shopping was an interesting experience. There were a few items that I wanted to make me more “at home.” My diet has been lacking in fresh fruit, so I bought some grapes and an orange. Also, breakfast does not have any type of juice. The closest thing I could find was tang, so I bought that for the morning. I even found a small package of Oreo cookies!! Yay!!!

This store had clothes, stationary supplies, food and other grocery items, cookware and entertainment possibilities. It was very crowded and noisy. In Canada, the music in stores typically is usually background noise (okay, maybe not places like West 49, but I don’t frequent those type of stores very often anyway, except when Byron drags me there to show me the next item on his “need to have” list). However, here the music is turned up quite high and thus people speak more loudly as well.

Prices? Well, you can get 6.5 Chinese Yuan or RMB for 1 Canadian dollar. So, I bought a box of 10 packages of drink mix for water bottles and it cost me $1.16. I bought 400 grams of grapes for $1.23. I saw these comfortable looking shoes which only cost $7.00. According to some websites, the minimum monthly wage is 1,000 Yuan or $147 CD. We would consider these prices cheap according to our wage, but maybe it needs to be that way so the people can live around here.

I made it back in one piece despite the fact, that in my opinion, we had two near misses. And did I tell you that seatbelts are also an option? (just a little bit of trivia for all those who worry about me )