Close but not quite there...

"Close but not quite there" is a sentence that is used all the time to describe things here.

For instance, yesterday I went to Walmart. It looks similar to an American Walmart but it's just not the same. They tried very hard to make it seem the same but the experience is anything but American right from the start. The parking lot is around the back, down a different street and very difficult to find. Then, once you are inside the garage, you have to drive for about 5 minutes, around tight corners, to find the actual Walmart parking spots and then you still have to walk for 3 minutes to find the entrance.

Once inside, the environment is Walmart like, with a Chinese twist, like whole frozen fish, in bulk.

Pizza, from Dominos, is another example of this phenomenon. If you order a vegetable pizza, it comes with onion (ok), mushroom (ok), tomato (ok), snap peas (huh?), and corn (what?)... It's actually pretty good, but again, not quite there...

Another example is the Chef. Please don't get me wrong, I am NOT complaining... Two days ago I sent a recipe for chocolate chip cookies so that his wife could translate it for tonight. Again, let me prefice this by saying that I am not complaining about anything related to having a chef twice a week. I am THRILLED with the privledge. I just want to demonstrate how nothing in China is as easy as it may seem. So, anyway, I sent the recipe. Today I saw him baking the cookies and found he had used a large bag of chocolate chips, twice the amount that the recipe calls for. There are 24 ounces of chocolate chips in a batch of cookies that calls for 12 ounces. Also, he used spreadable butter from a tub, rather than sticks. Huck had a still warm cookie for a snack and because there are so many chips in the cookies, it basically fell apart when he took a bite and he was quickly covered in chocolate... hands, face, shirt, chair. It was very funny.

Also, last week the chef was baking for guests coming the next day and I discovered he was using peanut oil in the baked goods, rather than the crisco vegetable oil I brought from America. Now I know why the baked goods have been "close but not quite there" lately.