It is incredible...

How cheap fruit and veg are in China
I just bought a carrot for 15 mao. That's 0.15 yuan, and there are 15 yuan to the UK pound. That means my carrot cost 1p. ONE PENNY! The bloody wrapping they put it in must be worth more than that!

So long as it's grown in China, food is cheap. And we don't even bother going to the market to haggle - these are supermarket prices. Garlic? Four bulbs for 10p. Pineapples (which are what, £2 each in the UK?) are about 30p. You can also buy them pre-peeled for that. Bananas are under 10p each; big, Chinese-grown apples similarly discount-priced.

But buy an imported fruit - imported anything - and the price skyrockets. Imported apples can be £2 a kilo, versus 20p a kilo for Chinese ones.

Same with eating out, in the main (although Western-style places are still cheap by Western standards). Chinese places are just stupidly cheap. My lovely fiancée is away on business at the moment, so I went to our nice local restaurant on my own last night. I ordered: broccoli cooked in green tea, a big plate of smoked tofu fried with chilli peppers, a bowl of rice and a big bottle of beer. The bill? £4.50 to you, sir. Lovely jubbly!