A Walk to Xiaotang

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Xiaotang is what everyone calls a “ small” town and is just a 5-10 minute walk from where we are living. This is where the other people who live here do their shopping. King Kong, who works with Jim, and his girlfriend, Miracle, walked to Xiaotang (pronounced show -like in cow - tahng) with us one night. Once we left the Ace gates, we heard music and saw a group of people across the street. They were standing in the driveway of a Honda dealer and we were told that these were the employees of that company and they were doing their “performance” as an advertisement. They were pretty good and definitely attracting attention. King Kong said that in the 3 years he has lived there, this was the first time he ever saw them doing it.
Xiaotang was bigger than I expected, but there were some obvious differences. One store had a TV out front and there was a whole group of men gathered around watching. A group of older women came over to us and were complimenting Leah on how beautiful she is - I hope all of this doesn’t go to her head! There was another building with a row of places selling food which Miracle said was the “fast food” section. We saw more dogs here than we have anywhere yet, but to Leah’s dismay - no cats. They also had the little carts on the backs of bicycles that you could pay for a ride - we might have to try this just for fun sometime!
The store we went to was a good sized store, kind of like a little Kmart. They had cell phones, books, bedding, toys, bikes, etc plus food. I didn’t see any meat here though. Jim had gone to Xiaotang last week with someone and they had gone to a market with meat. Jim saw one man with a refrigerator and commented that he must do good business. The guy with him said “No, that means his meat isn’t fresh!” All the meat you buy is slaughtered that morning - none of the average people have refrigerators, so they buy their meat daily as they need it. So, this guy having a refrigerator gave others the impression that his meat must not have been slaughtered that day! Such different thinking!
On the way home we stopped at a little outdoor plant store and bought a “mosquito plant.” I have to look up what it actually is, but they said that it would keep the mosquitos away - and it even smells like mosquito repellent! Kind of a citronella smell.
When we got back to Ace, Jim and King Kong had to go into work, so Leah and I invited Miracle to our apt. We taught her to play the game Skip-Bo, which she caught on to quickly and we had a fun evening.

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Photos

salt eggs
I don't know anymore than that they were called salt eggs!