cd dvd

For lunch today, I took three of my friends to the best jiaozi (dumpling) restaurant I’ve been to in Beijing. I had been there previously with a friend who is a local here. Otherwise it would have been impossible to find, it’s a little dive, across the street from Renmin Da Xue (The People’s University of China) in the basement of a little store down a random alley.

We filled our bellies with several cold dishes and pork & leek dumplings, pork & cabbage dumplings, and shrimp & pork dumplings. After lunch, we bought some ice-cream from one of the street vendors and decided to browse a DVD/CD shop.

Besides the usual pirated copies of American movies, a scattering of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese movies, I was surprised to find a large selection of Chinese porn. Unabashedly in full view.

Not that I’m surprised there is a demand and market for that sort of thing. . .it’s just that part of me still expects Chinese culture to be relatively conservative.

However, there are signs that this is changing. . it is no longer uncommon for couples to live with each other before they are married, women dress much more provocatively, and there seem to be more Chinese women at the bar scene drinking and smoking as much as the men. I guess China is changing in more ways than one.