Nobody fakes it like we do!

If you are a cynic one of the first things you might think of when someone mentions 'China', is 'being cheated' (this word is well known to all my chinese students), and 'fake stuff'. Lets examine this last one more closely.

China is the kingdom of fake goods. Someone once said to me, if it can be made, china can immitate it (cheaply!). Think of any electrical product or brand, and you can probably find another local chinese product that looks suspiciously similar in its design and logo. In fact, the only thing that's different will be it's capabilities, and the fact it will konk out well before the original product. Heck, theres even been past cases of fake (synthetic) eggs being made in china and shipped to hong kong! dodgy businessmen here will do anything to make a quick buck.
But even though most citizens can pick the immitation from the real thing (by looking at the ridiculously low price tag), they are still willing to buy the immitation. yes, chinese don't mind a bit of pantomine.

So anyway, getting to the point, my two american collegues and I were asked to take part in the foreign language department's annual variety concert. But you might be asking, what talent does alan possess? Well appart from being able to juggle 3 balls for short stints (thank you grade 8 PE class), and being one of the best english speakers amongst the present company, no concert director in their right mind would ever want to enlist my talents. but this is china, and the people here have a different idea of entertainment.

yep, we were asked to fake perform Rober Palmer's - Bad case of loving you.
Don't ask me why they chose this song, or why we were asked to do it. TIC baby. This Is China. Just accept it.

but then it gets a bit confusing, because some of us were faking it, while some of us weren't. Britton was given the drums, and as its a bit hard to fake playing real drums, he actually did try to play along to the music, half successfuly. Our singer, Deanna, was actually enlisted to sing for real, but because she had zero preparation for it, she ended up half lip syncing half singing. Weston and I were given the guitars, so we faked the whole thing.

Now I'm not sure if the students realized we were faking it, but the organizers were going to great lengths to ensure we looked as legit as possible. We were happy to make it clear we were faking it, to make it more of a joke performance, and also because we didn't wanna come across as being frauds. But the organizers insisted we do things such as plug our electric guitars into amplifiers. Though comically, Weston's cable fell out mid-performance and he had to plug himself back in while the music continued!

I guess if one never heard the original song before theres a chance they might think it's real. but the fact there's robert palmers voice booming over the speakers but no guy singing on stage would surely give it away.

They did this at another performance i watched a few weeks back, and this one was actually being broadcasted on state television. At the end of this other concert, the whole ensemble of performers came back on stage and lip synced 'We are the world' while waving their hands in the air! Seriously, if you are going to fake a song, at least pick one thats a bit more obscure than this one! Not only is it a classic, but even most chinese people would surely be able to recognize the voices of michael jackson, lionel richie, ray charles and cyndi lauper!

anyway, coming back to our performance, the 3 of us teachers were just feeling real awful while waiting for our turn, watching the other performances by students who actually did have talent. But after it was all done the audience still went nuts and loved us. I guess our students in the audience just really enjoyed seeing us up on stage letting lose and pantomining! And it was a lot of fun too, though i must say it's one of the weirdest things I've ever done.

After the performance we were asked a few pre-prepared questions by the hosts. Just simple stuff like what do you think of nanjing, what were you first impressions, ect. bit of PR.
In all, a very strange but fun experience. I still feel like a bit of a fraud though, so perhaps i'll pick up my guitar again when i get back to australia.

Why some students don't care about exams

Now that we've arrived at the business end of the semester, it's time to give the dreaded exams. as like every other aspect about the subjects i teach, i have been given no guidance on how to set my exams. Pretty much it's up to me how i want to assess the students. Actually the only thing admin do ask of me is to let all my students pass (eventually).

This to me has probably been the hardest thing to swallow, since I'm a firm believer in fairness and credit for hard work. I already knew beforehand that things are done differently in Chinese universities, especially the less reknowned ones, compared to western institutions. As with everything else here in china, money and connections are the bottom line, and it's not like i could fight against the system, especially since the final grade can easily be changed by someone above me. But the most i can hope to effect is to give the poorly performing students a bit of a scare, to re-invigorate their study habbits, before eventually, and reluctantly, letting them pass the amazingly easy supplementary exam.

Before I go on I have to explain the system of many universities here in China. My uni is actually made up of two different sub campuses. The two campuses are within the same grounds but are located at different ends. Everything about the two are seperated - teaching facilities, dorms, cafeterias. The only thing they share are the teaching staff, library and admin. Although there are no physical fences or barriers to seperate the two cohorts of students, each cohort tends to stick to itself and it's own side.

Now the difference between the two campuses is that one is for the top performing students in the gao kao (the college entrance exam done at the end of high school), while the other campus is for the lower performing students. all chinese students receive a scale grading from their gao kao exam, ben yi (the highest), ben er, ben san (the lowest). so ben yi kids go to one of our campuses, while ben san kids go to the other campus. Why allow some of the lower performing kids to come to your uni? money of course. a former students has told me that the ben san kids pay 3 times as much in tuition fees as the other campus. So you can think of them as cash cows. Anyway, the reason i'm explaining this is that after giving the same oral exam to both my ben yi classes and ben san classes, you notice not just a clear difference in ability, but also in study attitudes and work ethic. You do have some ben san students who are really concientious and have good ability, but unfortunately on the whole, the ben san class skill level is much lower, and more disturbingly, they just don't seem to care about study.

But you might be thinking, don't these kids care about passing their exams? Even i thought that most of them would perk up when i mentioned the E word, like the students in my ben yi classes did, but unfortunately thats not the case. the only way i can explain it is that these kids know they are guranteed to pass, since their parents are paying a lot of money to the university. Fair enough. So i've tried to use the tact of explaining that graduating is not enough, and that without the skill and aptitude they still won't be able to get jobs in the highly competitive chinese job market. nope, still doesn't raise an eyelid. and i think it's because most of these kids have rich parents, rich parents with connections who can land them jobs regardless of their skill or abilities. that, or these kids are just plain spoilt and short sighted. I mean seriously, I never knew i'd meet chinese students this plain lazy and apathetic when it came to exams. i can't ration their attitude any other way. i certainly hope their parents have damn good connections, because for a bunch of english 2nd year majors (who have probably been studying english for 10 years), they can barely understand or hold a conversation above the sophistication level of a 5 year old.

So as it stands at the moment, one of my ben san classes should see half of the class fail. But because of the scheduling of the supplementary exams and the sheer number of failing students I would have, logistically i wouldn't be able to do supp exams for all of these students. I will probably have to re-scale my marking criteria down so that only the worst of the worst students are forced to sit the supp. I would like to scare the shit out of all of the poor (and invariably lazy) students, but unfortunately i just can't. Hopefully they'll remember the reason why they're in uni themselves next semester. At this rate they have bucklys chance of landing a job without using connections.

mmmm so tasty but so deadly?

I still can't get over how cheap food is here, especially eating out. A decent meal, with rice, meat and vegies will only cost you about 10 yuan at the most for something fancy, and if you wanted just fried noodles or rice, the least you can pay is 5 yuan (around 80 cents). compare that to cheapest meal you can find in australia, a meat pie for $4.50? and you're laughing. Even with my low wages (by western standards) at about 166 yuan a day, food accounts for but a fraction of my daily spendings.

However, after being here for 3 months and talking to a lot of the locals, the issue of food safety starts to play on your mind. To me, chinese food is so flavoursome, but sometimes a little TOO flavoursome. i.e. too much MSG or monosodium glutamate.

I can't expressly remember everything about MSG without doing a google search, but I do know too much of the stuff in excess is not good for you. what was it, some type of cancer, gall stones, heart problems? all i know is it's not good. and you're always drinking buckets of water after a meal in a restaurant.

unlike in the west, you won't find menus proudly advertising 'we don't use msg here'. nope, if a menu in china had that plastered on the cover, first of all the chinese patron would ask 'what's that'? , and then they'd walk out after tasting the dishes.

but it's not just msg that seems to be in excess. every fried dish absolutely swims in oil, and sometime they throw in a large chunk of lard just to flavour it up. The sichuan dishes are especially, bad with their copious amount of chilli oil. but, it wouldn't taste sichuan without all that oily goodness.

they don't go lightly on the salt or sugar in many dishes either. so when you are confronted with a menu board in china, you do sometimes have to think to yourself what do i want today? an increased risk of cancer, hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes? take your pick. but whatever you choose, damn it'll taste so good. I also sometimes wonder what the effect of national diet are on the population. It seems that everyone here in China (especially the students), are always so sleepy. I have this theory that someting in their diets (the msg?), or the lack of (like coffee or diary?), must cuase the chronic sleepiness.

Then theres the issue of where the prime produce is sourced from. Now I'm not sure how credible the following i'm about to tell you is, or whether its stuff reported in the mainstream media or on social networking sites like weibo (the chinese version of twitter). So take the following information with a pinch of salt. (i mean, i'm not thoroughly convinced either).
One of my students adamantly warned me to never eat at the meat skewer places along the roadside. She reckons the 'lamb' meat, is actually dog, cat, or rodent, or whatever mixture they come up with on a given day. I've had my fair share of lamb skwerers already, and no signs of trouble yet. It tastes a bit rubbery, but hey, no less than the stuff you get from doner kebabs. So i'm not sold on that one yet. Besides, you probably face more danger from all the dirt and brake dust coating the meat as the cars whoosh by.

Then she up'ed the conspiracy theory level, and told me to never eat in restaurants around the campus. First of all, she just said they frequently re-use the same batch of oil to cook stuff. Fine, i could live with that. But then she told me stories of some oil suppliers sourcing their oil from dead human bodies! Again, i wasn't really sold on that one, and I didn't believe you could get much oil out of a dead body. Another one i heard from one of the other teachers was that some people collect sewerage water and chemically extract the oil out for re-use and sale. That one seemed a bit more plausible to me. Although i don't believe all these stories, I do believe that the worse of the worse Chinese business men (or women) are capable of doing such things. I mean, if some people in this country are capable of fatally poisoning babies with baby formula, then this ain't a far stretch. anything to cut costs and make a lot of money. an unfortunate ugly side of chinese society.

I also know for a fact that many farmers and agricultrual companies use excessive and dangrerous fertilizers on their fresh produce here. It's common knowledge amongst the people. I've been told by some locals to never things like lettuce or tomatoes raw. The other thing that might make you squirm is that some farmers use 'human fertilizer' on their produce. Notice the well trodden pathway in this picture from outhouse to crops! So just make sure you thoroughly wash your fruits and vegies when you bring them home.


Finally, i've learned to never buy cheap snacks from the grocery stores. many a time i've ventured into the realm of fake looking oreos, or half price cream biscuits, and have ended up bitterly disappointed. but it's not just quality thats compromised, as i found out after trying out a cheap chocolate coated muffin. You know how chocolate is supposed to melt in your mouth after a few minutes? well long after the muffin part had disintegrated, the chocolate coating was disturbingly still present in my mouth. it ended up forming something like a piece of plastic gum, which i had to spit out. So now whenever i pick up an ultra cheap product in the shops, my health and long term survival do flash through my mind. I now end up putting it back and reaching for the oreos.

Foreign language drama comp

The foreign language department organizes a plethora of activities for the students to showcase their language skills. First there was the speech comp, and now we have the drama comp.

As before, foreign teachers like myself are asked to participate as judges. For the drama comp i judged the semi final and final, but in the final most of the performances were the same ones i saw in the semis. they seem to run the preliminary rounds like Idol, where each round only 2 out of the 10 or so acts get knocked out!

Now the normal chinese citizen is not known for their acting or drama skills, let alone drama in a second language. Most students tend to focus more on academic subjects rather than artistic ones, and you could fairly say that the conservative character of chinese people doesn't make for a dramatic performance! I know that whenever I ask my students to do a roleplay in class, most of them rote read from a piece of paper in an inaudible voice like a robot, and usually don't even face the audience. They will avoid public speaking like the plague.

At least the drama performances in the comp were a bit more dramatic compared to my usual class fare. It wasn't exactly academy award winning stuff, but seeing it was in their second language it was still a good effort. They had their hearts in it, but they were definitely still sounding very chinglish with their lines. Unfortunately the poor organization of the event let down some of the performances when it came to sound equipment and props. It all seemed a bit disorganized when a stage hand would fly in and out, sometimes during scenes to grab props or put them in position! and there seemed to be a constant problem with microphones, or a shortage of enough to go around between the onstage actors!

Most of the performances were in english, with about 3 in japanese. fortunately for the final they invited 2 of the japanese teachers to come judge. in the semi final it was just me and another english teacher trying to score japanese dramas which we couldn't understand a word of! we just ended up scoring based on all the other aspects apart from the script. but hell if i knew they were pronouncing the japanese correctly or not!

Most of the english dramas were modern english translations of old chinese love stories. Although the english was a bit stilted, the costumes were quite impressive. And it wouldn't be a drama without a fight scene, so there were a few slow-mo fist fights thrown in for a bit of action.
A few of the dramas also incorporated random outbreaks of dancing and singing (which had nothing to do with the storyline at all ) while one of the love stories ended with a modern chinese love song duet by the two leads. I guess if the drama sucked, they could lean on the dancing and singing.

There was a moment of confusion though when a bunch of cos-play characters came up on stage and started to have mock fights. I was told by the chinese english teacher that this was a performance, so I was trying to score this performance that had no dialogue whatsoever. fortunately one of the other teachers pulled me up before i could hand in my score! Yeah these cos-play affecionados still weird me out. They had a few mock battles with their plastic swords before playing out some gay dance scene for a few cheap laughs. They ended off the performance by throwing out soft toys into the audience. I'm guessing they were cosplay toys.

Let's play ''Where's Alan?''

There's a running joke between my two american collegues and I. We agree that they're always playing 'Where's Alan (originally Wally)' whenever we're together and I walk away from them in a crowd. And it's no joke either, because i'll sometimes walk ahead or lag behind when we're out and about, and the next thing I know they're staring right past me trying to find me. Several times I've walked past them on campus and they've literally brushed right by without recognizing me. Since most local Chinese are fond of calling out 'hello, hello' whenever they see a white person (in a mocking tone i might add), I have to resort to something else so my friends can realize it's me. 'oi dickhead!' then they turn their heads. Sometimes I use my obscurity to my advantage though. I'm not exactly keen to talk to all of the other foreign teachers (because some just downright creep me out or make me wanna shoot myself), so if i see them approaching from the other direction I just have to tuck in close to the group of chinese students in front of me and lower my head. It works, every time.

I can understand why they don't notice me walk right by on campus. Since there are only about 7 white faces on campus, they get a hell of a lot of attention from everyone. Making eye contact with students might actually encourage some of the students to approach you. It's usually the ones that have only been around foreigners a few times in their lives, because you can sense the palpable excitement in the air when they come up to you. If it's a student whose english skills are pretty poor, it can be the most strangest and disjointed of encounters. Then you get those ones that will straight up throw themselves at you and request you be their English master (tutor) so they can prepare for their upcoming english exam. Much akin to those old kung fu si- fus! All i can say is thank god i'm not white.

Actually I also never look at the faces of passing students when walking around campus. I have about 300+ students in all my classes and meet so many more students every day outside of class, that i have a hard time remembering faces or names. Especially chinese names for that matter, because they're that much harder to distinguish, and it's like having to remember two or three names per one person since they have 2-3 characters. But coming back to facial recognition, I admit that i still suck at distinguishing chinese faces. and yes, I know I'm Chinese. Must be all those years of looking at caucasian faces in Australia. I said this in a previous blog from last trip, and I still maintain that there is much less variety in Chinese facial features compared to caucasians.
http://alinchina08.blogspot.com/2009/01/13-billion-is-big-number.html
Unless you have some massive birthmark or giant mole, slapped across you're face, I'm sorry, I will not recognize you if you have that generic Chinese chop.

And something else I'll add is that Chinese people tend to follow the exact same fashion trends. Many of them sport the same haircuts, and have similar tastes in clothes and even glasses frames. I swear to you, there are two girls in one of my classes that can pass as identical twins- same looking face, same type of frames, same haircut. I don't know what causes this trend, the fact that chinese society doesn't mind plagiarism, or the fact that it's a much stronger collective/group society, and that nobody wants to stand out from the group.

But the local chinese themselves have no problems distinguishing two chinese faces. I mean, they can recognize me in a second, but thats probably not a good indicator since not many other guys sport facial hair or use hair gel here. So obviously it's got something to do with practice and exposure. My american friends and I joke that after a year here in China we'll be pros picking out chinese faces in a crowd, but we won't be able to distinguish a red head from a blonde when we get back to the west. ha ha.

Inappropriate sporting attire or the lack thereof and workout habits

A common perception about Chinese people is that they are all unathletic. Why I can remember when I was in highschool that most of us Chinese mostly excelled academically or musically. It was uncommon to see a Chinese student, especially those that weren't born in aus, to excel at any sort of sport. Mind you, the Phys-Ed classes we used to have in school were all tailored towards western style sports, so maybe my Chinese classmates could've kicked ass if ping pong or driving was in the curriculum. But no, for the most part, Chinese students are less sporty compared to their western counterparts. And if you're not interested in something, you're not going to take it very seriously are you? Take sporting attire for example.

Chinese people have some funny ideas about what appropriate sporting attire is. People seem to play sports and exercise in anything they can randomly find in their closets. Or maybe they just decide to exercise on a whim and just do it in whatever they're wearing at the time? I've noticed that jeans are a hot item for any sort of sport, especially running and jogging. It's heaps more prevalent amongst the middle age or older, but you still see some of the youngsters comitting these crimes against sporting fashion. Sometimes you'll see someone fly by in their jeans and nice shirt and wonder if they're in a hurry to get somewhere or they're just working out. But the phenomenom is real, cuz i've seen plenty of them running around the fields and tracks.

It's like they could probably go straight out to dinner after their run, except the fact they'd be all sweaty and smelly. But ah, maybe its linked back to the fact that chinese people don't wear deodorant or fragrance. So that means they either don't stink much when they sweat, or they just don't care about BO. Or for the men anyway, all the cigarettes they smoke later will drown out any smell. Or maybe they just wanna look fashionable while working out, who knows?

While we're on the topic of jogging and walking, some chinese do this strange thing of walking backwards around running tracks. Maybe it's supposed to be better for the legs somehow. It's a bastard when you're trying to run around a track though and you've got uncoming traffic reversing towards you, much akin to real driving on chinese roads :)
Like westerners, some runners will also listen to some tunes while running. The only difference is, some of them believe you'll love their choice of tunes too, and belt it out over the mini speaker of their radio or player. and they pump it up, real loud. and it's not like Chinese music is good to work out to anyway, since most of it is soppy love songs. Not much in the way of a fast beat to get you pumped up.

Some of you might be sitting there thinking , ''hey al, maybe some don't have enough money to buy sporting attire, quit being a bastard!'' But when i mean sporting attire, i don't mean buying an expensive nike sweat breatheable shirt. all i'm talking about is simple pair of shorts or tracky dacks, and maye a t-shirt. that stuff is dirt cheap to buy in china, and surely every chinese person has at least one old pair sitting around in their closets.

That's the thing i've noticed with people working out. the lack of exposed skin. I don't know if chinese people are just modest and loathe to expose their legs, but it seems that most of them will refuse to wear shorts. They even cover up their arms as well sometimes. I do know though that most asian girls like to preserve their white skin because of their perceptions of beauty.
Even in competitive sports or sporting carnivals, some people will still wear jeans, long pants and/or long sleeve tops.

Some of these pictures are from a sports carnival held within the university. Now i assume most of these kids taking part are doing so of their own freewill, and WANT to win. but i tell you they aren't doing their chances any good by wearing some of this stuff. I mean, when the olympic games came to beijing in 2008 didn't they notice Usain Bolt wasn't sporting a pair of Diesels in the 100 metres? C'mon, surely they also understand the concept of 'wind resistance?' Or maybe some of these students just took part for the hell of it and wanted to look fashionable in front of their mates.

Heres a final pic of some inter-uni soccer match played on campus, and no, that guy is not a streaker, it's the referee!

Mistaken identity rocks & Hiking Chinese style

Last weekend I finally made it to Huang Shan, otherwise known as Yellow mountain. On my previous trip to china i'd been told by many friends that a visit to huang shan was a must. I'd actually been looking forward to this trip as it was opportunity to get away from the hoardes of people and breathe some fresh air.Unfortunately as i later found out, huangshan is the place for neither of these things!

Ok, so when I think of hiking i always hark back to the memories of national parks and peaks in australia. pristine air, tranquility, scurrying creatures in the bush, and a distinct lack of humans.
But of course, this being China, hiking here is a much different experience.

Huangshan being the famous attraction it is draws many a crowd to its lofty cloud covered peaks, interantionally and moreover dometically. And with chinas population of 1 billion +, on any given weekend you choose to visit you're bound to bump into the other few hundred that also decided upon that same weekend! You don't really manage to get away from the crowds of your home city, you sorta just trade a local crowd for a national one. and yes, they all bring their phlegm with them.
At least you don't have to worry about being rammed by a wayward bicycle or electric scooter up there. Because theres two passenger cable car routes operating up the mountain it means accessibility to many more people who otherwise wouldn't have been fit enough to scale the mountain. Not that fitness is the only factor preventing one from scaling the mountain. You'd also have to be slightly bonkers to try negotiating some parts of the climb as safety provision can be as little as a chain running around a rock face and narrow steps. I guess thats why they built the cable cars!
So yeah, with the cable cars any man and his dog can now reach the summit of huangshan. once you're up there hiking = walking up a lot of steps.

With the volume of people visiting each weekend, queue times can take up to 3 hours for the cable car. fortunately it was only 1 hour when we went. However, once up in the mountain you run into a new concept of hiking unique to china, queuing! yep, queuing for lookout points, queuing for the famous sites, queuing just to get damn past!

I can accept the fact theres so many people in china, but what i can't accept is all the tourgroups and their megaphones blaring away! and the normal speaking volume of some chinese people is already so loud that when combined with a megaphone, one can hear them from any part of the mountain. Which brings me to the next unique thing about huangshan. the distinct lack of wildlife. Over the entire weekend i believe i only saw 1 squirrel, and 5 birds, and that was only when we ventured far off track. seems that all the noise of the crowds, megaphones, and jackhammers building the next hotel, have scared them all away.
On a side note, you'll notice some very strange hiking attire sported by the chinese, and i will devote a whole blog entry to this in the future more generally about sporting attire. It wasn't unsual to see guys in business suits or women looking like they ready to go out on the town.

The last thing I'll moan about before i get to the good points is the air. Despite all the no-smoking signs fixated everywhere, it's still a chimney up there with all the men puffing away. Yes, theres no pollution from any factories in huangshan, but it's sorta just exchanged for cigarette smoke from all the tourists. I'm suprised huangshan hasn't burned up yet due to forest fires.

If you can get over the crowds, huangshan really is a beautiful place, and the views from the top towards over peaks are breathtaking. Often clouds and mist (or the confluence of cigarette smoke?) would roll in over a matter of minutes and obscure the view, but when the peaks are drapped within them it cetainly gives it an ethereal feel. Appart from the views, huangshan is famed for it's Ying Ke Song (welcoming tree, nb theres also a farewell tree!). Aptly named as the shape of the tree resembles an outstretched palm, beckoning visitors to enter. Before going I'd been told by several of my chinese students that parts of the famous tree were actually fake or enhanced. Haha. no suprise there. apparently, some parts of the tree aren't looking as lush in it's old age, and also if it looks more impressive more tourist $$$ will roll in. i didn't study the tree closely enough to see what sort of 'enhancements 'had been made, whether it be a spraypaint makeover or complete plastic branches!







yep, you can't escape the commercialism of China, even up on the summit of huangshan. why, upon reaching the top of lotus peak, one of the highest points on the summit, you'll be greeted by a small stand where two guys are engraving gold or bronze medals with your name, all for a mere 10 rmb. I didn't get one done, but i'm sure it said something like 'I made it to the top of lotus peak [insert name here and date here]'.

the other drawcard of huangshan is it's famed rocks that supposedly resemble stuff. Now I say 'supposedly' because i couldn't see the resemblance to any of the given names, or the connection seemed a little bit of a stretch.


The first one here is called 'Monkey gazing over the sea of clouds'. Monkey? Really? I would've called it 'Kidney bean gaving over sea of clouds'. I think the huangshan tourism department were just dying to somehow connect it with a monkey since it relates to the monkey king from monkey magic (do love that show though).

And this next one is called 'flying over rock', which makes no sense to me at all. maybe the meaning was lost in translation. I know it's morbid, but i would've called it 'tombstone'.

We probably passed dozens of other rocks that have been labelled with other obscure names, but we just didn't know what we were looking at. If the rock formation looked funky, we took a picture of it. Didn't try standing there going cross eyed to make out the resemblance (i've read theres one called 'pig headed monk eat watermelon')

The last thing to mention about huangshan is all the porters that carry up the goods to the hotels and stores on the summit. if you happen to pass a porter when there aren't many people around he'll usually offer to sell his foodstuffs to you at a discount price to what is charged up on the summit. If the porters can unload some stock it makes their load a little lighter and easier to carry up to the top. as an example, bananas sell for about 5 rmb each on the summit, while we managed to bag 3 for 10rmb. Actually we coulda haggled a bit more since the girl after us got 4 for 10rmb. dammit.