Anhui is far more typical. Among other strange things, vendors butchered chickens in the street and left the offal behind. Not the heads, they are a delicacy, just the inedible parts of the offal. That wasn't all, if you get my drift. Every couple of days, an old man with a card, broom and shovel would come by to clean up and haul it away.
She shared a Stalinesque style apartment with a roomie who also taught English at the same local academy, middle school grades because the administrator decided my daughter was better with the elementary and high school kids.
Interestingly, they had pretty good internet service (as long as they stayed off forbidden websites), bought a local computer for just over $100 in local currency and were told not to spend a dime on software. The school, or one of the school contacts, installed just about anything they wanted, most likely pirated.
There were beggars everywhere. The local friends she made or those from the neighborhood with whom they'd made friends would shoo them away if they were around, but they soon learned it was less hassle just to take a cab to the grocery store and back so as not to deal with them.
Her roomie couldn't wait to go home after the semester assignment was over. My daughter accepted an invitation to move to Beijing to study Mandarin at the University, which she picked up quickly thanks to a good foundation.
She was invited to attend Olympic events every day during the Olympics. She confined herself to one or two during the weekends so as to concentrate on her studies.
It was quite an education for her as she got to see how both the regular people and the upper crust lived.
Sorry.