A Vagabond Strolls On - 8

China being a communist state, never had an accounting system in place. The revenue estimates of business houses are approximate version from the data available. The industries are run by government, funded by government and the government measures its efficiency on basis of people's feedback, rather than capitalist idea of profit of the company. Off late, the chinese government has taken steps to account the entire business cycle. The sales tax vouchers are one among them. When we buy a product or utilise a service from an organisation, a company or a local store, we can demand for this sales tax vouchers. These are coupons printed by chinese government available in all shops. The attraction in those vouchers is that it can get your money back. They are more like lotteries; they have a column, in bottom right side corner, masked by silver coating that determines our luck. Either 'Thank you' or 'You are lucky' is written in the masked column. If you are lucky with your voucher, you can get your money back.

In initial days, the government has returned lot of money through these sales tax coupons. The people got attracted by the offers, started demanding "Fai peah" (name of these coupons in chinese). Now the government stopped giving away lot of money, but still those carrot paradigm left in mind of people works; I had seen almost everyone including foreigners demand for it. It has two advantages: It helps people in giving part of their money back. It helps government to know the exact trade volume in every store and shop. This is what I call creativity. Tail piece: I had won five yuan back when I paid my hotel charges. Hurray! Didn't I tell you how lucky I am.

I enjoyed the journey in Singapore Airlines and transit hours in Singapore Airport. Airlines crew members were awesome and friendly. I heard some famous fashion designer has designed their exclusive wardrobe. I remember singapore as an exotic place, will go back there with my family for a vacation. I felt very comfortable in Singapore, as If am back in home. The in-flight entertainment is great, it has on-demand movies, television channels... We missed the transit tour on singapore by 10 minutes. The transit tour is being arranged by SIA if the transit hours are more than five hours. We reached the tour counter just 10 minutes after they closed the gate for that tour batch.

The path-for-blind in streets of Xi'an caught my attention. These are part of pedesterian platform with a special tile pattern. Any blind person can walk around the city with ease, by sticking to this lane and following the tile pattern. These pathways are not even present in most of the so-called developed western countries. China and Xi'an rocks man! I love the place and infrastructure.

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