popular english language books for next to nothing here. its usually
on the weekends, people sell books (mostly business or current affairs
related titles) out of their bicycles or scooters outside of subway
stations. for example, you can get freakonomics or thomas friedman or
malcolm gladwell or harvard business review books for 7-20 rmb per
book. sometimes they have fiction books too, like dan brown or the
devil prada whatever its called. books are priced not by popularity
or nytimes best seller charts, but by how big they are. the bigger
and thicker the book, the more expensive it is; and vice versa. its
easy to build quite an impressive library for a fraction of what it'd
cost in the US. needless to say, these are basically copies of the
real books itself. all the content is real and exact. not sure if
this is what thomas friedman had in mind when he wrote "the world is
flat", which by the way costs 15rmb, or a little bit more than $2.
anyways, my whole point is, that today one of those book sellers
showed up outside of my subway station. so i took a look. guess what
he had? lonely planet china! seriously! i didnt ask how much, since
i already have one, but still, he could be a great source for rip-off
lonely planet books. i wonder if he also carries time out guides (my
favorite).. ill have to ask him next time..
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