School of Rock DVD. Note the chinese text on the cover.

Several times a week, we pop by the campus Friendship Store to visit The Nice DVD Lady and browse through stacks of DVDs. It is worth mentioning at this point that the Friendship Store is the best campus store ever. You wouldn't think such a small space would sell everything you possibly need. Available goods include: food (local and imported), scarves, twinkly lights, stationary, liquor, chinese kitsch, badminton rackets, a tiny electronics counter that sells electronic dictionaries, dvd players, cell phones, mp3 players, toiletries... the list continues.

Anyway, tucked away in nook are several cardboard boxes of DVDs, containing movies old and new, priced at 8 kuai a pop (or about 96 cents USD). Presiding over everything is The Nice DVD Lady who keeps track of stock and screens DVDs on a little TV and DVD player in the corner. This is because pirated DVDs can contain surprises about picture or sound quality - sometimes the movie is completely different from the one on the package cover and disc label. Example: I bought School of Rock only to discover the movie inside was Rock School. This happened before in another DVD store and happened again yesterday with The Nice DVD Lady. Both times, I've returned to exchange the movie for another one.

When she saw me tonight, she excitedly informed me that School of Rock was in her new stock of DVDs. When she checked the movie and saw it was the real deal, she pulled it out of the box and put it aside just for me.

With customer service like that, of course I had to purchase the movie.