A little OT, but I was surprised to read that UK/US citizens spend less than 10% of their wages on food, whilst in China it's over a third.
wsm.wsu.edu/researcher/WSMaug11_billions.pdf
My (Chinese) wife thinks the figure is more like 50% for most Chinese. She was surprised at how cheap many foods were when we visited the UK. Is food here proportionally more expensive or is dining out given more importance?

Food here is much more expensive than it was even 5 years ago. Especially meat, but also anything thing that has been transported.
The other trend is supermarkets will try to move over to prepack veg, this tends to hide the price and allows the adding of value.
Even our local supermarket is 2-3 times the price of the wet market on some things, this will have an inflationary effect on wet market prices with time (what the market will bear).
Some prepared foods are already comparable in price to the EU or US.
Cost of eating out has shot up. We went to a place in the new Dianchi Lu/RiXing Lu complex the other night. Not that fancy but they wanted 30rmb for vegetable dishes. We were with friends from Beijing who refused to stay at those prices.

The flip side is that for the largest socio economic group in urban populations (the working class) earnings are less than 4000rmb per month. That is how you can spend a lot on food.

I also think that eating out is very important in Chinese culture. I also come from a culture where eating out is a very big thing, and I would say that we probably spend close to 50% of our income on food and drink.

Hey Dazzer. Just curious, how much RMB would someone have to pay you to never post again here? Not that I want that, its so cute how inteligent you think you are...

I am obviously not as smart as you think you are.

If I can quote and earlier post of yours, and I think I can, " i, unlike liuminke, dazzer, and chingis, don't like to fight or make people look bad on the net."

thanks babe. cute and charming!

there's a buddhist restaurant in dali set in a nice courtyard area that has vegetarian buffet lunch for 5 yuan. all the rice and a variety of at least 5 or 6 vegetables you can eat. not sure how they make money.