My Life in China

A lot of Chinese fear the possibility of radiation from the Japanese nuclear plant at Fukushima, even to the extent that supermarkets saw a rush of buyers of salt in large quantities. Despite the fact that the salt doesn't contain very much iodine so it's basically useless. Last night in a local supermarket, everyone was fighting with each other over who got to buy the salt, while a single old lady on the side calmly browsed the other goods, even shaking her head and laughing. Someone nearby walked up and asked her why she wasn’t fighting to buy some salt and the old woman laughed and answered: "I still haven’t used all the salt I bought during the SARS incident!"