2) Split pants. Traditionally here kids don't wear diapers. And to avoid getting their mess on their clothes the Chinese decided to just cut that part of their pants out. And although you see kids in diapers if you're at the airport, at most places they are just open-butt, just sitting on a blanket in their shopping cart. Eww.
3) Battery life. Since arriving here there have only been two things that are battery operated in our possession that still work. A calculator and a watch. Within a week my fairly new watch stopped working, then slowly all of Mavis' battery operated toys and books started biting the dust. Only a few have started working again with new batteries. Seems like something you'd see on LOST, I only hope it's the smog dust and not radioactive material! Oh and our smoke detectors each beep once an hour, and we have five. We have tried changing the batteries but they still beep. We were told by our apartment liaison that they beep so you know they still work. One must now decide if the threat of fire outweighs our sanity...
4) Neck floats. Yes, that's right, it's a float you put around a baby's neck to keep it's head out of the water. These things are in all the stores so they must be popular. Looks pretty comfortable.
5) Brooms made out of sticks. In a place where everything is filthy from smog dust it's actually pretty "clean" from a garbage perspective thanks to the thousands of people China employs to sweep the streets. But in this land of technology their brooms are handmade, out of sticks. I haven't seen one that looks like it was manufactured yet. Oh, and these state of the art tools are also used as shovels when it snows.
