Mmm mmm good

Hangzhou is only about 40 minutes away - a commute if you will... Anyway, I go there every so often for a day to get away from the burbs. I buy cheese (by the way, I now have so much cheese that my fridge looks like the dairy section of a supermarket), drink my Starbucks, have a cocktail at the Hyatt regency, and more or less try to feel more superior than any of the other inhabitants of this country. Which isn't hard in China if you're a foreigner. Your status lies somewhere between zoo animal and celebrity. Irregardless, if you walk into somewhere expensive and nice your treated like a queen. Which I think is another reason why I like China. It's one of the few places left where one can still kind of grasp the feeling of the colonial era superiority. (On a related note, I wasted most of Sunday looking up what elitist clubs I'm eligible for - surprisingly quite a few - so next time I'm in NY or London it's nothing but 5th avenue and St. Paul's for me. Now if only they'd do something about those membership dues...)

Hangzhou is actually really nice though. I would say it's nicer than Beijing, but not as nice as Shanghai. And when I say nice, I mean more Western, 'civilized', and the weather is pretty good. It kind of reminds me of California in a warped way. So I went to Hangzhou today because I had some plane tickets I had to buy and other stuff. I was gawked at like a zoo animal as I walked along the West Lake (which is beautiful) towards Carrefour after my cocktail at the Hyatt. Now I love making fun of the French as much as anyone - quite possibly more so - but god bless them for introducing Carrefour to China.

I'm not really an emotional person. I laughed through Titanic, but I was almost brought to tears in Carrefour. They had mustard. I never thought a food item could have such an effect on me. The Campbell soup in Shanghai came pretty close - all the red and white cans lined in a row never looked so beautiful - but this mustard really blew my mind. And the cereal bars. I'm about to tell you a pretty sad story.

My sister-in-law gave me a cereal bar before I came to China for the plane ride. Since I've been through the whole 'Western food withdrawal" before, I put it aside because I realized I'd appreciate it much more after I got to China. Anyway, threw it in my bag and kind of forgot about it. The other week I was rummaging through my stuff and came across it. I got really excited and opened it up. About half way through I decided I should stop and save it, you know, sort of ration out the bar. Over the next couple weeks I was picking at half a cereal bar that had been sitting in my bag for the past three months.

It's sad, it's just very, very sad.