Simpson's Paradox

It’s time for another trip to Wangfujing to visit the foreign-language bookstores! I’ve read everything in the house at least twice (Except for Scarlett, because seriously, once was more than enough.) and needed to restock, and Stick was looking for a German-English dictionary because he’s decided to learn German instead of Chinese.

On our way to the bookstores, we wandered down the Wangfujing snack street, a food-only nightmarket mix of delicious and nausating food on skewers. Candied strawberries, squid bits, chicken kebabs (heads, feet and all), the smells of frying noodles and roasting meats and fermented tofu.

The row of stands is pretty busy, and vendors try to outshout each other. Some of them use English to get our attention. Hello, chicken, ok! Hello, baozi, ok! Hello, food, yes? Hello, ok, strawberry! Ok? Hello! You look! Ok? I’m starting to wonder if there’s anything that can’t be expressed with Hello and OK when one fellow calls out:

“Hello, I love you!”

Edit: It turns out that the Wangfujing Playboy said that same thing to Beijing blogger Penglisha the same weekend. So much for fidelity!

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• Chinese Food on February 16, 2006
• Not The Same on October 8, 2007
• Chinese Standards on June 17, 2006
• Didn’t See That One Coming! on January 11, 2007
• The Best Stuff On Earth on December 8, 2006