In celebration of our first Chinese pay day, and as a birthday present for me, Josh and I bought a DVD player. Now we can enter the world of pirated movies! We started out with just two films: The Lord of War (don't watch it, it's crap), and Capote (great, but PSH's TC imitation is so dead-on, it's distracting). Each of these discs set us back 5 yuan, or $0.65. I doubt any royalties will make it over the Pacific. Some of my readers in America might disapprove of movie piracy, but it doesn't bother me at all. China's disregard for "intellectual property" extends to the reverse-engineered equipment in their factories, which is what allows us all to buy everything cheaply in America. And besides that, Nicholas Cage does not deserve a cut of receipts for his lazy, phoned-in performance as a gun runner. Depriving Philip Seymour Hoffman of his piece of the pie is a little harder, but somehow I manage. The real danger of black market movies is in the distraction they provide. We have two jobs here: One is teaching English, the other is learning Chinese! Watching American videos is a good pressure-release valve, as long as it doesn't keep us from hitting the books.