Living in China for 6 years, now, I expect to be disappointed by the simplest request.  When I first got here, I needed a power strip to plug in my computer equipment.  Before I even talk about that, a preliminary observation is that most apartment, classrooms, etc. have a dearth of power outlets in the wall.  Anyway, I bought a power strip with four slots for Y5 (less than US$1), and I thought that I was in heaven.  In reality, it lasted one week before it burned out.  Quickly calculating in my mind, that would be Y260 per year to buy one per week, so, it would cost more like $US35, which is more than a decent power strip would cost in the US, and they last a long time.

When I wanted to buy a CD player for my apartment, I could not find any that played more than one CD.  I told my assistant that it is common in the US to get a rudimentary combination 5-CD-player, dual-tape deck and radio with two speakers, in a box you can easily carry home, he was in disbelief.  Even six years later when we bought one for our new Art Gallery, L. C. Yilang, in Guangzhou, we could only get a 1-CD player, and when we wanted to connect four speaker to it instead of only two we had to buy an amplifier to plug the player into to have output to four speakers.  I should mention that the 1-CD player I bought six years ago for Y400 ($60), it lasted for only one year [the 5-CD combination player I left back in the US is still in use by my nephew).

I bought a pasta machine, like my mom bought on the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, in the 1960's and is still in use by my sister, it lasted 1 year.  The next one we bought lasted one month.  We took it back to the store.  They sent it in for repair.  I lasted another month...too much time and taxi fares wasted to get the motivation to take it back again.

I could go on and on and on and on.  Every time I want something, and I think that my request is simple, coming from the U.S., even if from a small town in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, it becomes impossible.  Other times I settle on a substitute, which has such inferior quality that i should not have wasted my time, in the first place.

Thus, the other day when I heard that China was launching a new communications satellite, the image that immediately came into my head was this: