The zhongdian guide has turned into an all-time-consuming passion recently. Working on it is a lot cheaper (money-wise) than the other candidate project I had in mind to entertain myself, namely renovating the house. I go through the day thinking, "how do I get more people to use the site? how do I get more people to find the site? what kinds of features do i need to add to encourage people to add content? i wonder if people would switch from so and so other site if i did this? i should remember to search for a big georeferenced list of chinese cities with population data. maybe i should copy this and this feature from so and so other site. how can i finish the chinese translation? how many visitors should i wait for until i start trying to sell ads to the bars in town?"

Jason and Amy went shopping for tiles today and conversely, not wanting to do any real work on anything, I tagged along. When you go to purchase home improvement materials in Xianggelila, there's no Home Depot megastore that has all of your needs at fixed prices. Instead, there's a big plain of concrete with long rows of corrugated metal-doored shopfronts sprouting out of it (like any other city I've seen in southwest china, except without asphalt to break up the monotony). Each shop has a particular combination of goods. Some stock locks and paint; some stock light fixtures; some stock tiles; some stock pipes and electric tools; some stock toilets and extremely fancy shower machines. I've seen self-contained shower units before, slightly wider than a person with a magnetic clasp on the plastic door that keeps the water inside. But these were long enough to use for a bath, and looked like they might come with marketing material with a list of thirty features. I saw electric cables dangling from the outside of one, and followed them up with my eyes to a speaker. This being China, I doubt that the speaker was waterproof.

I also looked for a pump. We found one -- only one -- that didn't need electricity. After a half-hearted haggle, it cost 250 yuan, down from 290. It probably weighted more than 25 pounds, and was painted a color somewhere between purple and lavender. I'm worried that it will need to be primed, even though our well water is only about a meter below the well opening. I didn't buy it.

The other alternative for pumping water that I have in mind is a rope pump, which is apparently originally a Chinese invention. Unfortunately, I don't know where to get the required plastic dongles to tie onto the rope. If I want a plastic rope, I need to go to a hardware store food market, not in the home improvement market. Maybe they'll have something suitable (plastic or not) there.