Not sure what it is but in China the two most safely guarded resources are : toilet paper (qi jin) and plastic bags (tai zah).

For instance none of the bathrooms are equipped with toilet paper, unless you’re at a fancy hotel or restaurant. They expect you to carry it around with you.

Now if you go to a store and  buy a crapload of stuff, say 5 40 ouncers of Tsingtao, they’ll be like “Ni Tai zah ma?” (You want a bag?).

Bag prices range from a few Mao (very small amount of money not measurable in American money.. lets say its equal to letting a person smell a dollar you have or put a penny in their mouth and then you taking it back) to maybe 1 Yuan (.14 cents).

The amazing thing is if you say yes, what with your 5 forties of Tsingtao and all they sort of look at you like “Well hello mr big spender”.

The other day I almost crapped my pants at the mall and tracking down toilet paper was a race against the clock to save the United States from a terrorist attack (my pants being the United States, eh you get the idea…)

Finally I found a machine that sold little napkin packages, but it only took 1 yuan coins and I only had 1 yuan bills (no, that didn’t happen…) so I had to like explain to people who work cash registers in my broken chinese why I wanted the coins instead of the bills.

It’d be like if someone was trying to urgently trade you two nickels for a dime. You’d think they had mental problems.

Anyhow, I think China needs to realize that if you make something so readily available people won’t abuse it. Unless they’re chinese people. Well, I guess this is sort of a catch-22. For example, McDonalds doesn’t hand out unlimited ketchup in China, the reason is that while you might go to McDonalds and see that as ketchup you can use there (you’ve probably got a bottle at home) Chinese people are like “Hey, free ketchup!”