Point-and-Eat

I can’t read Chinese.

Often that makes things difficult. Other times it makes things easy. Like breakfast. My choice is determined by the photo displays at the canteens on campus here at Renmin University.

At one of my favorite ones, just down the stairs in front of the business school, I just point at the poster. An egg, french toast and daily coffee for nine yuan. With the exchange rate at 6.8 yuan/one US dollar, that’s a deal that’s hard to pass up.

And no reading required.

An update: In case you were wondering, Pretz, those shrimp-flavored pretzel sticks, taste all right. But they smell nasty.

That food review comes from my colleague Larry Powell and his son Jordan, who have fallen in love with the more traditional butter-flavored pretzel sticks in the Pretz line of products.

Another Missouri Beijing student, Lindsay Toler, has been blogging, with some video clips, at neighborsgo.com. You can check it out here.

Shrimp-flavored Pretzel Sticks

The guard at the door of our hotel on the campus of Renmin University likes to high-five Americans as they walk through.

Another guard, who sits in the hall leading back to the guestrooms, enjoys this conversation:

Guard: “Hello, how are you?”

Me: “Good. How are you?”

Guard: “Good.”

I just bought a box of “Pretz.” Yes, that’s a picture of a shrimp in the bottom left-hand corner of the box. Yes, these are shrimp-flavored pretzel sticks. No, I won’t share.

– Greg Bowers

Missouri student Mark Welsh is also maintaining a blog from Beijing. Here’s the link: http://beijingmark.blogspot.com/