For the time being, I think we’ll just chock my most recent post up to my lovable misanthropy and leave it at that. The behind-closed-doors workings of monolingual Westerner-bilingual Chinese relationships is a question that I’m interested in, but my investigation of it couldn’t have been less thorough. To start with, I probably should talk to some of those Chinese girlfriends, too. Maybe I’ll do a video feature on it in the future.

Anyway, the past couple days I’ve been wandering around trying to amuse myself while waiting for work to start tomorrow. This mostly means going to various stores (the RT Mart down the street, Wal-Mart, etc.) and trying to get the things I need for my apartment. In the process, I have learned that stores–at least stores like those–in China no longer give you plastic bags to pack your purchases in. You must bring your own bags, or pay 1RMB/bag. This new regulation is aimed at reducing waste, and while it’s sort of a pain, it also seems to be working. Most of the people in stores that I have seen are bringing their own cloth bags, not buying new ones.

Last year, I wrote a post about the other ways China finds to reduce garbage and waste–smaller trash cans (yes, it does make a difference), power-saving automatic shutoff timers on almost every electronic device, etc. Culturally, though, it seems like not everyone is on the same page. On the drive from the airport back to my apartment a couple days ago, our driver suddenly rolled down his window and idly tossed the clutter of tickets, receipts, and other stubs of paper on his dashboard out the window.