10 extraordinary things you can buy in China

If you want new sensations – you can jump with a parachute. If you want to completely forget what gray everyday life is, you should buy a ticket to China. Well, if you already live there, then you already know about everything, and only a couple of hundred yuan separates you from owning some of the strangest things that are available in free trade only here. Below is a list of ten of the most extraordinary things you can buy in China. If you know any other interesting things, you are welcome to share the information in the comments.

• 1. Live crabs from vending machines

  In 2010, Chinese crab supplier Twin Lakes Crab Co decided that going to the grocery store was not very convenient in some cases. So they built vending machines where you can buy live crabs. These machines have been installed at subway stations throughout the city of Nanjing. Imagine an ordinary vending machine, and then replace all the chips and cookies with air-filled plastic boxes containing live, moving crabs - that's exactly what it looks like.

  Crabs are kept at a temperature of 5 degrees Celsius, which is cool enough for them to go into temporary hibernation, but not enough to kill them. They are sold for about two dollars, and the bottom row of the machine also has bottles of ginger vinegar, which is usually served here with crabs.

• 2. Panda tea

  It is worth noting right away that Panda tea is a drink made from panda excrement. This is the most expensive tea in the world - a kilogram of this dried tea will cost you about 77 thousand dollars. But why does anyone even want to drink this? It is believed that pandas actually digest only 30 percent of the bamboo they eat, excreting the rest of the unprocessed bamboo in their feces. People believe that in addition to various nutrients, bamboo contains antioxidants that can prevent cancer, which is why Panda Tea is promoted as a cancer tonic and a weight loss drug.

  The factory for the production of this tea is located in Sichuan province, and the owner of the Panda Tea brand is Yanshi An, who founded his company by purchasing 11 tons of panda feces from a nearby panda reserve.

• 3. Food cut, cooked and served by robots

  In 2011, Chinese inventor Cui Runquan created Chef Cui, a humanoid robot that cooks and serves China's popular homemade noodles. It is usually prepared as follows: strips of dough are cut by hand, which are then boiled in boiling water. Robots are already mass-produced, and you can buy such a robot for about $2,000. At the moment, more than 3,000 such machines have already been sold.

  A fast food restaurant chain in Shanghai also uses robots - but here they are used like real chefs. A clear advantage is their efficiency: in just three minutes, one robot can wash dirty dishes, mix ingredients, prepare a dish and serve a finished order on a plate.

  And finally, if simple robot cooking is not enough for you, you can go to a restaurant called "Dalu Rebot Restaurant", where robot waiters work. Here, six mechanical humanoid waiters drive along a special path, which can serve 21 tables on their way before returning to the kitchen to fill their trays.

• 4. Canned air

  If you want to get some fresh air in China, it will cost you about five yuan. It is at this price that Chen Guangbaio sells the product of its new canned air line. It's really just a tin can filled with air. On the one hand, this product is a publicity stunt, and on the other hand, it was created to draw attention to China's serious environmental problems. The air pollution in China is so strong that the smog standing over some parts of the country is visible even from space (seriously).

  You can enjoy three kinds of fresh air: "Pristine Tibet" - the purest of the three options, "Revolutionary Yah'an", for those who feel nostalgic for the heroic past, and finally, the air with aroma of "Post-Industrial Taiwan”.

• 5. Stunt double for traffic jams

  For a country with 1.3 billion people, it's not surprising to have quite long traffic jams. However, several entrepreneurs have managed to turn even such a problem into money. They offer a service where a person will sit in your car for you while it's stuck in traffic.

  It works like this: if you are stuck in a traffic jam, you can call this service, tell them where you are, and wait for two people to come to your car on motorcycles. An understudy will get into your car, and a motorcyclist will take you where you need to go. This service is mainly offered in Wuhan city in the center of China. This metropolis is one of the most densely populated in all of China, which is why it is here that some of the worst traffic jams in the country are formed.

• 6. Excursions with little people

  The “Kingdom of the Little People” is something like a mix of a theme park and a municipal district specially designated for this “kingdom”. This place is located in Yunnan province and covers an area of 5261 hectares. The territory was specially allocated for the construction of a miniature world in which only little people will live, and which will serve as a kind of amusement park. How offensive that sounds is up to you.

  The "Kingdom of Little People", which is the idea of ​​an entrepreneur named Chen Mingjing, is still under construction. However, 30 cottages for little people have already been erected there, as well as a building for staging a parody version of Swan Lake, which has already opened to visitors. Although many people do not like the idea, Chen states that he will provide the little people with permanent jobs, and that without his help, they would be in a difficult position, given the country's economic problems. In addition, according to him, many residents of the Kingdom are proud to be part of this community.

• 7. Obama Fried Chicken

  You can truly find everything in China, from morally ambiguous dwarfism to vaguely racist copyright infringement. In 2011, an enterprising businessman opened China's first OFC, Obama's Fried Chicken, in Beijing. The restaurant sells fried chicken and uses a banner stylized as KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), as well as the logo of this company, complete with a cartoon-smiling caricature of Barack Obama.

  It's hard to believe, but this isn't the first OFC restaurant in the world, nor is it the first time Obama's image has been used to sell chicken. The first OFC restaurant opened in 2009 in Brooklyn, but was closed soon. In addition, in a stunt completely unrelated to the closure of a Brooklyn restaurant, the official KFC chain in China ran an advertisement in 2011 in which an Obama-like actor makes a speech and then a huge chicken sandwich falls on him. There is definitely a hidden meaning in this, but you probably already guessed it yourself.

• 8. Key chains with live turtles

  Probably almost the weirdest items you can buy in China are key rings with small live animals. The animals, usually small Brazilian snake-necked turtles or mackerel fry, are sealed in a small bag or plastic ball that is filled with liquid containing nutrients. This liquid supposedly nourishes the animals for three or four months.

  Of course, the tightly sealed bag raises many questions about how the animal gets its oxygen, and several animal welfare organizations in China rightly made a fuss about these key rings as a particularly cruel form of animal abuse. Usually people buy these key rings either for good luck or out of pity to set the animal free.

• 9. White people

  Of course, you cannot buy white people in China, but you can rent them, which in general is not so different from buying. Chinese businessmen often hire white actors to stand by their side at important events, and that's where their role ends.

  The idea is that the Chinese believe that Western companies are very successful, so if a Chinese businessman appears in the company of a white man, who is most likely his Western business partner, then this is a symbol of status in society and prestige. Sometimes an actor just stands there, sometimes he makes a speech, and sometimes he is given a small role complete with fake business cards. One actor named Jonathan Zatkin was paid to make a speech at the opening of a jewelry store and describe "how wonderful it was to work with this company for 10 years."

  According to Zatkin, the requirements for this job are very simple, you just need to be white, not speak Chinese or not speak at all if it is not necessary, and pretend that you just arrived in the country yesterday.

• 10. Tea picked by the lips of a virgin

  This is probably one of the most amusing points: the Jiuhua tea plantation, located in Henan province, hires virgins with 3 (C) breast size to pick tea leaves with their lips and then drop them into wicker baskets between their breasts.

  Girls cannot touch leaves or baskets with their hands, and in addition to having a third breast size, the plantation requires girls to have no noticeable scars or wounds. According to a company spokesman, these strange requirements come from the legend of how tea was collected by the lips of fairies. Tea collected in this way is endowed with the purity of virgins, which is transferred to the one who drinks this drink.