Peanuts--$500.

I have just been looking over a report from Teddy White on what it is costing him and Annalee Jacoby to live in Chungking and get the news out of China (like this week's cover story on American General "Al" Wedemeyer and his resurgent new Chinese Army). And I think you too might be interested in seeing some of the entries on his report (expressed in Chinese dollars).

For example:

$1,300. I took out one of my Chinese contacts, her husband and her baby to a milk shop (that's big swank in Chungking) and we each had a glass of milk. This came to $1,300 Chinese dollars or about $2.50 U.S. I estimate the milk was one-third cow juice, two-thirds water. This is inflation.

$6,000. Rickshaw fares. When I first came to Chungking I could get a rickshaw ride downtown for 60-c-. Now it costs $400.

$600. Common pins.

$4,800. Telephone bill. An interesting item. You cannot buy a telephone or have one installed in Chungking today for any kind of money, and people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of using one.

$200. Ash tray.

$3,600. Curtain material. In my last report I listed cloth bought in India for curtains and suggested then it would possibly become dresses for Annalee. It did.

$8,000. Salary for Chang Ling-shu (messenger boy) for one month. I have raised his pay $3,000 a month because prices are going so high it's impossible to keep him at the old price.

$1,800. Permanent wave for Annalee Jacoby.

$1,500. Padlocks for rooms. $3,000. Dog meat. TIME has acquired a Chungking dog called Gorgon, a mongrel bitch spotted black & white. She is very friendly to Annalee and myself but has an enormous and terrifying bark which serves to frighten off intruders and gives great prestige to TIME'S Chungking office.

$9,600. A party for Army officers at the Press Hostel. Once upon a time this party would have cost $1,000.

$2,000. Dinners for Annalee and me. One night the food at the Press Hostel was so incredibly bad we couldn't take any more of it so we went out and spent $2,000 on a good meal: soup, two bowls of rice, a dish of chopped chicken and pepper, a dish of bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and mushrooms.

$600. Pressing and cleaning of uniform. I have two suits. This is the other one.

$3,400. Tips to servants--to the boy who flushes the toilets, to the boy who sweeps the walk, to the boy who tends the garden, for the cook, the assistant cook and three helpers. They are a sad and bedraggled lot.

$400. Chinese cigarets.

That's what it's like to be a correspondent in war-inflated China these days.

Cordially,

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