Wine & Wine Girl

Had an interesting extended conversation with a girl in a western wine shop this week. They are a high-end French place, with $25-250 wines. It's funny that she has to sell wine she's never tasted, since the manager thinks the wine is too expensive to waste on them; instead he tells them what it's like so they can tell customers !

And actually this doesn't matter much, since Westerners don't shop there - it's mostly rich out-of-town Chinese who want the status of serving expensive wine at meals, so they have no idea what they are buying anyway. Interesting how markets develop.

She also was rather forward about the advantages of various forms of government (such as multiple parties in the U.S.) and looking forward to more competition among ideas as Chinese politics evolve.