Entertainment's Value

The other day my father, fully aware of my vices, asked if there were any special DVDs he could send me for Christmas. This is my reply:






Thanks Dad, but I'm doin' fine.

Since arriving in China I've made close to 200 DVD purchases. Some of these have been TV shows, some box sets; and so in all well over 200 individual DVDs.

You can find a DVD store on almost any corner here and most discs run betweem 6 and 8 RMB. Sometimes the quality halts at man-with-camera-in-theater, sometimes its a pre-release item given to critics to review ("screeners"), often a perfect copy of the acutal release (though likely sans-special features). The hard part is finding anything thats not exceptionally mainstream or uber-popular and it is certainly not difficuly to find crap. "Garfield," for instance, is still a top seller here in China.

We teachers lend a lot of movies and TV shows around, encouraging others to try something we discovered in the local DVD bin. My copy of "Lost - Season 1" quickly made rounds through the entire staff and some of the girls are burning through "Seanfield." One of our new guys asked for a load of zombie movies one day (and got "Night of the Living Dead," "Undead," "Shaun of the Dead," "Beyond Re-Animator," "Army of Darkness," "Resident Evil 1 & 2," "Friday the 13th Part 1," and "Land of the Dead") and tonight I'll be picking out children's movies for our winter camp.

So, again Dad, I think I'm doing fine. But is there something I can get you?

PS- In your eye, Scott Weiss!