[Zeestein]

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How bad is the pollution in China in the areas you visited?
What places did you stay in, were they hotels or whatever? What was the pricing like for your lodgings?
Could you give us a general indication of prices for common staples?
What language did you speak whilst you were there?
What television channels did you see most people watching (apart from CCTV)?

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1. I been to Shanghai, HK, Guangdong, Xiamen, Fuzhou. I'll disregard the tourist-Mountains. The air up there are fine. From best to worst is probably Xiamen, Fuzhou, HK, Guangdong and then Shanghai. I swear I need a breathing mask just to walk around in Shanghai. There simply cannot be cars for every household in a nation with hundreds of millions of the middle-class. There is no enforcement on basically any level of world-class legislative enviromental schemes either.

2. Like I said earlier, I stayed with my grandparents mostly who lived in this country villa in a compound complete with security gates. I did stay in a hotel for a couple of nights, and was propositioned within like 20 seconds for massage/hookerage by some chick. I think its cos she loves me. The price was 80 RMB/night (~US$11) for a double bed, with TV and bathroom.

3. Put it this way, if I wanted to eat 3 decent meals for US$2, I could. I could just as easily spend like US$20 for a crappy steak in trendier more western places too. There is a definite two-tier economy. Chinese food are generally way cheaper/better value than western stuff.

4. I'm functionally fluent in Mandarin, and the local dialect. The former is more widely used.

5. Dunno, I only watched TV for sports ala sawker. Me and my sister bought a ton of cheapass DVDs. My grandpa watch TV serials and TV galas (Oct 1st - 7th was China's celebration of the installation of Communist rule, and there was a bunch of these gala things on). Strangely there are also some realtiy TV in dubbed Chinese like Project Runway.