Shanghai, China
As noted in last night’s blog I was up early (at least early to me!) to meet Eric for breakfast at 9AM. We ate in the lobby restaurant at Le Royal Méridien Shanghai. It was a large breakfast spread. Most things you could imagine wanting to eat for breakfast were there, as well as many things you would never want to eat for breakfast or at any time for that matter. The highlight was my raspberry yogurt. It was very clearly labeled with a picture of a raspberry and the word in English. When I opened it, I noticed it had an orange hue as opposed to pink. When I tasted it I realized that evidently in China raspberries are peaches.
After breakfast we set out on our day’s adventures. Our first stop was the fashion market. Eric had a list of things that his family wanted. I didn’t have anything specific on my list, I mostly just enjoy seeing the products, people and bargaining for the sake of bargaining. To get to the market we took the subway. I hadn’t ridden the subway in Shanghai yet. It was everything I could have hoped for and more. The shear mass of people and pushing and shoving that occurs is exactly what you would expect in a place where people have no concept of personal space. Eric told me to take note of how the people board the subway cars. It’s hilarious. They don’t allow one another to get off before boarding. Instead they stand directly in front of the doors and just push their way in. I’m not sure why it hasn’t seemed to occur to anyone that if they waited for people to get out of the car, they could then just fill the vacated space.
Eric visits Shanghai with some regularity so he has vendors with whom he most prefers to shop. He had warned me going into the market that he can be a bit of Jekyll and Hyde when it comes to negotiating. I was looking forward to seeing this because Eric in my experience can only be described as super nice, mild mannered guy. Stop one was Sammy the bag lady. Eric wanted to check colors of new arrivals. I peeked around the store, which is more like a six foot by six foot cube. Across from Sammy was Xiang the watch guy. Interestingly enough when I looked around Xiang’s cube, I didn’t see any watches. He was featuring sun glasses. Next on the list we went to the board shorts guy. Eric and his family live in San Diego, so he buys board shorts for his boys with regularity. I was entertained by the fact that the shorts (Billabong, Quicksilver and Hurley among others) come with wax scrappers. This is very practical for all the surfers in Shanghai. While wondering I found an item that interested me. I won’t mention what in case the person who will be receiving the gift reads this. I will say, however, that Eric was a force when it came to negotiating for it. Jekyll and Hyde definitely showed up.
Once we completed Eric’s to-do’s at the market we decided to stroll down to and around Pudong, both to see the sites and hoop hunt. We found one fun court with cool Chinese characters in the background but only a little of Shanghai’s iconic skyline. This was a taste but my thirst for a Shanghai hoop was still not quenched.
For lunch we ate at an awesome hole in the wall dumpling place. We didn’t have napkins, utensils (other than chopsticks), or a plate bigger than a silver dollar but that didn’t matter. I made a mess of myself and didn’t really care. It was that good.
The stop on the shopping portion of our tour was a DVD shop. I had not been in a counterfeit DVD shop in all my previous trip to Asia. It was pretty much just like the movies. You enter a main door where things appear more legal. A guy scopes you out a bit. Eric knew where he was going, so we first when through one “secret” door, then another, then up some stairs and we finally arrived in the “new releases” section. I thoroughly enjoyed this stop.
On our walk back to the hotel (we were probably a good 30 minutes or so out at this point) and later on in the evening, we saw all kinds of fantastic things that are probably better represented in pictures than words. Below is a sampling. Be sure to read the captions.
Talent: Very close to our hotel there appeared to be a “Talent” show or search. It was laughable terrible. I wish I had taken a video. This guy danced around with morocos tied with ribbons and occasional threw in a karate move. Eric just kept saying, “It has to get better... it has to get better!” I wanted to know the location of the gong.
I wonder if Obama would like or dislike being included in this crowd?
Canadian Gigalo - I wonder if he has any idea what this shirt means.
Eric had a fantastic line in regards to this. Only in China do you see men and boys peeing in the streets (you really do) and dogs in diapers.
I’ve seen next to no college gear for sale in the first few days in China. This picture would be the one exception. It crack me up that I can 7000 miles from home and the Civil War is still at play.
I concluded today by heading back to our first stop, the fashion market. After spending a day seeing what was out there I felt like I now had a better idea of some things I wanted to buy or at least negotiate on. I ended up acquiring more than I had planned but had I had a lot of fun in the process and I think I got some pretty darn good deals.
Shopping can be exhausting (no really!). It’s time for bed.
Until tomorrow,
Katy
No comments:
Post a Comment