The world's biggest bookstore

Alright, I know there's a store by the same name right in the heart of downtown Toronto (I used to go there a lot when I was growing up in t-dot) but I just came back from a humongous one in China. It's not a stereotype - Chinese people really are that studious. There were at least 1,000 people there this afternoon, and that's a conservative estimate. The legal books section alone was the size of a bookstore that you find in a typical North American mall. I think the Chinese-English, Chinese-Japanese dictionares etc. section was about twice that size alone.....

Books are A LOT cheaper in China. Since most of the people wouldn't be able to afford to buy Western books if they kept their Western prices, many publishers sell a special Chinese edition. These books are referred to as 'photocopied' books (though there's actually a specific name for it, I just forgot what it is.) Basically, they're bound just like regular books are, but the paper/printing quality is not as good as the ones you get in Canada/US. Not that they're horrible to read, just that the paper might be thinner and stuff. These books are also a ton cheaper. For example, some of my brother's computer textbooks that sell for over $100CAN can be picked up for about $50 yuan here - that's about 1/10 of the original price, and that's not even including the tax savings!

I ended up picking up 3 Harvard/Yale law textbooks (yeah, I'm a geek, but I heard Public International Law is confusing, plus books on Legal Research & Drafting can always be useful) plus a English - Chinese dictionary of legal terms for under $20CAN. Isn't that ridiculous? That works out to about the cost of a Big Mac/Haagen-Daaz pint (can you tell what I've been craving lately?) per book!

I also bought my 2nd and 3rd Chinese language CDs ever over the weekend. Actually listening to one as I type right now. I think the last Chinese CD I bought was over 10 years ago......basically I gave up on them because Canto-pop (what they call music produced out of HK) is so manufactured. It's full of so-called good-looking people that totally can't sing at all. Ugh. But I've been listening to Taiwanese music a lot the past few weeks since the Chinese MTV channel plays a lot of that music. It's actually not that bad. Probably because all of their singers are so ugly. I'm not trying to be mean, but the way I look at it, the uglier the singer, the better the CD. After all, in those cases, people won't be buying the CD because of how he/she looks, but because of the music right? =)