Holy Rice Cakes Batman!...

I do most of my grocery shopping (particularly for hard to carry home items like water and drinks) from a website called Beijing Home Delivery. It is a wonderful service run by a group of English speaking Chinese men. The prices are reasonable and you get all five of the city's English expat magazines delivered with your order. Most of their items are sold in Sam's Club type quantities which saves you some money on not having to have delivery so often; they do charge a small delivery fee, but because a large quantity of groceries is hard to get home on the subway, you end up spending that money on a taxi anyway.

My latest order arrived this morning. In addition to the usual Cokes and bottled water, I ordered a bag of rice, the smallest one they had, and since I don't know the metric system, here is what I ended up with:

I think I will have enough rice until I leave China mid June! Most Chinese families use lots of rice per week, so these large quantity bags are common. For singles and other families that use less, you can buy rice "loose" in the produce section of the stores by scooping how much you need into a bag. I thought based on price and the fact that it was the "small" size, I was ordering about a pound of rice. I guess I need to learn the metric system; this is bigger than most bags of dog food I have bought before!