Reminiscing About China

So that's basically China.  I'm amazed that I had so much to write.  I'm amazed that there are still little stories I didn't tell.  But now that it's over, here's a little table of contents of the adventures, which turned into a 18 part series:

• The Frame Story
• Engrish in China
• Eating in China
• Spitting in China
• Drinking in China
• Shopping in China - Part 1 - Bus Shop
• Shopping in China - Part 2 - Tour Guide Shopping
• Shopping in China - Part 3 - The Mosquitoes
• Shopping in China - Part 4 - The Wangfujing Marketplace
• Shopping in China - Part 5 - The Suzhou Market
• Shopping in China - Part 6 - Chinatown in China
• Shopping in China - Part 7 - The Black Market
• Shopping in China - Part 8 - What We Bought
• Getting Around in China
• Pooping in China
• Massage in China
• Tourism and Sights in China
• Entertainment in China

I sure hope you all liked them.  If there's anything you think I missed and you think I should recount, let me know, and I'll be sure to blog it.  Also, if you want to see some beautiful photos from another denizen of Bus B, check out Ela's Pictures.

I was told to have a look at the TV series, "An Idiot Abroad."  In this show, Ricky Gervais sends an average Joe, named Karl Pilkington, around the world with the idea of sending him to exotic locales and gauging his reaction.

The very first episode, Karl is sent to China.  They do a great job of showing the culture from a western point of view.  And they're spot on.  I recommend that if you get a chance, you watch it too.  It's on Netflix, and is a great visualization of what I talked about here.

Entertainment in China

Ok, so one other thing we did while we were there is take in a couple shows.  And I was so excited, too.  I mean, this is the land of the super-flexible and talented artists of the Shanghai Circus.  The land of kung fu.

I mean, we were in for some real treats, right?

I didn't mention this during the post on the bus shopping, but one of the things our tour guide told us was that the Chinese government puts its best face forward to the world, selling the finest products that they make on the world market, and keeping the B grade stuff for the Chinese people.

I actually think this applies to the entertainment as well.  As entertained as I am by the Chinese performers I've seen in the states, I wasn't that impressed by the shows we saw.  Permit me to explain.

The first production we went to was the Kung Fu Panda show.  It was at a school for Kung Fu, and I think we were kind of watching their equivalent to a recital.  It wasn't typical recital bad, but it was super cheesy, and many of the performers were kids that were clearly getting better at their craft.  The story had something to do with Mr. Panda doing Kung Fu and trying to get up all in Mrs. Panda's fur. Or something.

It's so funny.  I didn't feel like finding out the name of the place where the Kung Fu Panda show was, but I realized I had a picture.  So yeah.  That place.

This sign showed the English translation of what was going on.  It was as Engrish as the rest of the signs in Beijing.

Well, that was Beijing's show.  On our last night, we got to go to a circus in Shanghai.  Having seen the Shanghai Circus at the Paramount a couple times, I was pretty excited.  I like that kind of Cirque du Soleil stuff.

Except again, I think the export was better.  The feller who was juggling the large vases kept dropping them, and more than once we caught other mistakes by the performers.  If it had been the first show of that type I'd seen, long before Cirque du Soleil, I might have really enjoyed it.

It was exciting, though when they dd the motorcycles in the murder-sphere-of-death bit.  They did that really well.

Either way, I wasn't that impressed by the Chinese performances I'd seen.  Like a tiger mom, I expected Asian perfection, but I think we got b-grade performances.  Could have just been the tour too.  Dunno, but I was far more impressed by the historical sights, the shopping, and the food than I was the entertainment.

Tourism and Sights in China

China is a place with a deep and rich history.  No eight day tour was going to scratch the surface, but we did get some cultural flavor when we were there.  I've talked a lot about the culture through the products of China, but there were other sights, too.

For example, we did go to the Forbidden City in Beijing, and the Summer Palace.  We got some interesting pictures at each.  For example, at the Summer Palace was the giant rubber duck that's been traveling around the world.  It was there for National Day, which happens every October 1, and was just a week prior to our vacation, so I guess it was still there:

That's Brian, our tour guide.  And that duck is like three stories tall.  Biggest rubber duck I've ever seen.  And totally worth seeing.

Because National Day was so close, Tienanmen Square was also decked out with one of the biggest bouquets of flowers I've ever seen:

Girls, I know you like flowers, but this thing is also about three stories high, so you won't be getting this delivered through FTD.

Also note that this was taken in Tienanmen Square, across the street from the entrance to the Forbidden City.  Note how blue the sky is in the pictures.  Not a cloud, and no smog.  It was beautiful and fresh and wonderful.  I am well aware of how lucky we were to get such beautiful days in Beijing.

The gate to the Forbidden City.  You can see the giant portrait of Chairman Mao over the entrance.  Note the post in the foreground.  I't got a butt-ton of surveillance cameras on it.

Inside the Forbidden City.

You know, we also got to go to the Great Wall.  That was an adventure in itself.  Nicole had a little trouble making it up, and decided to wait for us on a landing instead of going on.  To be fair, it is an impressive structure that induces great amounts of vertigo due to its uneven steps and steep ascents.

It's interesting to note that on the Great Wall is a chain, and it appears to be a custom to bring a padlock and lock it to the chain.  These padlocks had initials and engravings and all kinds of stuff on them.  Kind of like a heavy metal version of the gum walls in San Francisco and Seattle.  See below

I was a little surprised not to see a skeleton dangling off a handcuff here.

That's right.  A Great Selfie.

We did go to a public park in Beijing.  There were thousands of people in this park, and there were lots of activities you could participate in.  We stopped and did Tai Chi with a group of people, and I played a little ball game with a local.  Some folks did something like Hacky Sack, while a group of girls played the cups song on the ground.  People were singing together en masse.  And there were lots of games of Go and Chinese Chess being played with a ton of people looking on at each game.

And there were groups like this every few feet along this bench for hundreds of feet.

And we visited the Temple of Heaven.  But this time, however, I was getting a bit exhausted at visiting cultural landmarks:

Temple of Heaven

For a bit of modern history, we visited the site of the Water Cube and the Birds Nest:

Mona wore that Birds Nest like a sombrero!

In Suzhou, we visited some beautiful gardens.  In one of these gardens, this woman was playing beautifully

Nicole is taking a picture. I'm taking a picture of her taking the picture.  That's fun.

One of the things we were taught about in Suzhou was about the round ports in the walls.  They are called Moon Gates, and once you see them in Chinese architecture, you'll see them everywhere.  That and the little lip at the door that you have to step over to get in to just about every old structure in China.  Those little lips apparently keep out evil, because evil can't hop.

In Hangzhou, we stopped off at a Buddhist temple for a few minutes.  We weren't there long, and they were closing down, but the place smelled heavily of incense.  Here's why. All those ashes in this giant cauldron are all incense sticks.  I imagine that this is about how Denver smells these days.

Getting lightheaded from the fumes.

What's funny is that after this, I don't really have many pictures of cultural stuff.  Granted, once we went to Shanghai, it wasn't so much about cultural activities, as Shanghai is a relatively western town.

But I don't think it was just that.  I think part of the reason I didn't take many pictures of scenery was that I was having too great a time with our tour group, who had by then all gelled into great friends.  As such, I think the cultural interest gave way to personal interest, and that was great by all of us.

Massage in China

One thing I heard about China before I went was that they have a massage culture.  That there's massage places all over the place, and that people often stop in for a massage after work, the way we might stop in to a bar for happy hour.

Nicole is a big fan of spa treatments and massage specifically, so I knew we'd have to sample.

On the first day there, our tour guide said that we could get a full hour massage treatment in our rooms for $30 (I think.  Boy, my memory of October is getting blurry; I'm glad I'm almost finished with my China series).  I jumped at the chance.

Nicole and I have done side-by-side massage a number of times.  It's fun, although being together doesn't usually matter much since massage is such an individual, internal, sensation/sensual thing.  For me, I'm always half or wholly asleep anyway.

Two ladies that spoke not a lick of English showed up at our hotel room that night.  They had us lie on the bed and got to work.  It was nice to do this in the hotel room.  I was so tired that I fell asleep, and don't remember a whole lot about that part of the experience experience.

After the horizontal massage, they had us each sit up at the edge of the bed.  They took what seemed to be like Walmart bags and filled them with hot water and herbs.  The water looked to be a brackish brown by the time they brought the full, steaming bag to us, and they had us put our feet in.  It was just herbed water, but in my very tired state it kinda looked like diarrhea and I was kinda grossed out.

That said, they tied the bags around our feet and let our feet soak, and it felt great, this making of the feet soup  After the soak, they massaged our feet, another very nice experience.  And that was about it.  A very nice, very cheap massage that we could just fall asleep after.

But that wasn't the only massage we got while in China.  When we got to Hangzhou, I asked the hotel about massage places.  They gave me directions to a place called Sha-na-na (yes, like the 70's tv show with Bowser, and no, you cannot make this stuff up).  It was only a couple blocks away, so after Nicole freshened up from the day, we walked over.

When we walked in, it was kinda like a restaurant.  They asked us, "Body or foot massage?" and followed that with "For two?" in a similar tone to what a hostess at a restaurant would use.  Yes for two.  Yes full body.  I think this massage was also $30, but for 90 minutes.

They escorted us to a private room.  It had three loungers in it separated by little end tables.  Nicole took the middle one, and I took the one to the right.  Someone came in and brought us tea.  Then they brought a little plate of of fruit for us to enjoy, including pieces of dragon fruit, which we really got to enjoy over the course of the trip.

The TV was on, tuned to a Chinese variety show that looked a cross between The Voice, America's Got Talent, and The Gong Show.  Lots of goofy silliness that we didn't understand, but at the same time kinda did.  Goofy humor is somewhat universal.

Then our massage artists came in, and they were very good looking.  A well-built hunky chunky monkey for Nicole, and a petite, cute tiny thing for me.  No kidding, this girl wasn't more than 90 pounds soaking wet.

And neither of them seemed to speak any English whatsoever.  Communication was limited to grunts and pantomime.  This was just fine with us.

Communication was bad enough that it took an embarrassingly long time to understand that my girl was telling me to get out of my chair and come sit on a stool so that she could work on my shoulders and back. I've got a long torso, so it's no surprise that once I was on the stool, this petite little thing had to get her own stool to stand on just to reach my shoulders.

No kidding, I felt like a hulking giant.

And once she was up there, she sure did a number on me.  This was deep tissue massage.  I'm pretty sure she massaged my lungs through my shoulders, given how hard she was pressing.  I pictured her behind me, lifting her entire body up after placing her elbows between my shoulders and neck, just to put the entire weight of her body on these two points.  Cirque style.

After the back rubs, he two massage artists brought in wooden buckets full of herbs and hot water.  That's right, we got to make the feet soup again!  And after the feet soup tenderized our feet meat, they started working on our feet.

My girl worked rather vigorously, rubbing the top of my foot pretty hard.  It hurt.  And after a while it hurt a lot.  I cringed and squirmed, but didn't say anything because I figured this was just me being a massage wuss. I mean, it's not like this little lady could cause any damage, right?

So we finished up our massage and headed out into the night, relaxed and feeling wonderful.  Feeling really happy to have experienced some of this massage culture.

Skip ahead to the next morning.  My foot kinda hurt when I woke up.  And then I had a look at it in the light of the bathroom.  This is how it looked:

That is not my natural feet color.  That is a colossal bruise.  

That is a massive bruise.  And it hurt.  For the whole rest of the trip.  The Chinese people have hard lives, in some ways, and we Americans have it cushy.  I don't know if a hardier foot would have stood up better to the massage, but I like to think this was a great reminder that my body is the way it is because we have it so good.

That was and will remain, however, the last foot massage I get in China.

Pooping in China

Oh boy, I'll bet you're thinking.  Today we get to talk about poo.  You can imagine we're probably going to get a bit... biological..., so if that kind of stuff offends you, please run to safety.  There may even be some ugly visual details in one of the pictures, so if you're eating chocolate pudding or some nutty fudge, please consider stopping before reading on.

But I'm not kidding, questions about the bathrooms are the most numerous I get asked about the trip to China.  More specifically, I get asked, "So... Did you use one of them squat toilets?"

First, I have to talk about what a squat toilet is.  I sure didn't know, and when I found out, I'm pretty sure I didn't think such a thing would exist in a modern society.  Almost like that would be the definition of "modern society" implicitly.

Restrooms in China are decidedly and deucedly different from the ones anywhere else I've ever been.  Sure, I've only ever been to North America and Europe before, but that's enough places to figure that the design of the toilet is pretty much a world standard.  This is not what you get in China, and it doesn't end in squat toilets.

Squat Toilets

Ok, so for those not in the know, a squat toilet is a little porcelain hole in the floor flush to the ground (oh, I don't even know if that pun was intended).  Beside the hole in the ground, along each side, are often obvious little non-skid pads on which to place your feet.  Anyone that would typically use a toilet in the sitting position would instead place a foot on each non-skid pad and then pop a squat, hovering over the hole and doing your business.  Or as women tend to know this move, "the rock concert".

And so I don't suspend the punch line too long - no, I didn't use one.  I didn't avoid them, per se.  Whenever the urge was there, the squat toilet was not my only option.

Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel pretty lucky about that.  I didn't have to worry about testing my squatting prowess.  Given that I wasn't in particularly great shape during the trip, I'm not sure my thighs would have held out.  I can only imagine the embarrassment of toppling over in the stall while trying to do your business, and the idea of rolling onto the floor in a Chinese bathroom makes me mentally retch a bit.

Also, I'm not sure if I got to talk with this about the folks that were with us that did have to squatpop.  If any of you are reading this, are you supposed to remove your pants?  I would guess not, since you'd have to remove your shoes to do that, and I can't imagine standing barefoot on those little pads or the bare stall floor.

But if you don't take off your pants, then aim becomes more important.  I would have worried about aim while butt-naked, but with clothing as potential splash damage, I would probably freak out.  I mean, I know that we're talking about point-blank range here, but visibility isn't very good, at least for a fella my size.

Yup.  That's it.  That's a toilet.  Way down there by the floor.  Oh, and the paper doesn't go down.  It goes in the little bin.  That probably made the whole experience even worse for me.

"Why is there a picture of a microscope on this stall door," I asked.  Oh wait, that's a little guy pooping.  Well, at least they got the number right...

Note, I think squatting is supposed to be better for you.  Something about the alignment of the rectum if I recall correctly.  In fact, check this article.  What nice little cartoon images!

Toilet Paper

I think it may have been Johnnie that first told me about this, but public toilets in China do not universally provide toilet paper.  This... I couldn't even imagine.  I mean, really, what if you're out and about with an emergency, and you have nothing.  What if no stranger can spare a square?  Or doesn't understand your language?  Squat down, do your biz, and walk away?

In China, it's apparently BYOTP.  No shit.  Literally.  BYOTP or no shit.  That or make sure you have plenty of oxi-clean with bleach at home.  Maybe this is why there are so many Chinese laundromats?

So it's not ubiquitous, no.  You do have to carry some in case of "emergencies", and it's not like you see a lot of Taco Bell restaurants there.  Maybe that's why.  To minimize emergencies...

Further, even if you do remember to bring your own paper, you can't flush it.  I don't know why exactly, but in each little stall there's a little garbage can where you dispose of the toxic discards.  See the picture above, and you'll see what I mean.

So I guess that's why the public toilets smelled so bad.

Now some bathrooms were monogenderous, but some had a little mixigenderous vestibule prior to branching off to two separate areas.  This little antechamber generally had a few sinks and in a rare occasion, a big roll of communal toilet paper that you could grab from.

This idea of a communal toilet paper seemed, in general, to beat the idea of not having to carry your own, but I got to thinking.  What if you grabbed too little?  I don't know about anyone else, but I never seem to know exactly how much I'm going to need in a given two-session.

The whole thing just made me paranoid.  Maybe that's why I didn't have to use the squatters.  Maybe the Duke was scared.  Maybe the Duke was hiding.

Toddlers Learning to Poop

This really doesn't fit anywhere else in any of the other stories, but since it is relevant to pooping, I'll relay it here.  In China, we saw a number of toddlers walking around in what looked to be assless chaps.  They were pants that had no crotch in them, and it's my understanding that they're used to toilet train kids. I think this is the same school of philosophy that Nicole once suggested we use for Gamble, where we let him wander around in the backyard naked until he let loose, so that we could help him identify that feeling.  If we did that, I don't recall.

Anyway, I didn't see them often, but Nicole spotted them a couple times.  I think she actually saw once where they were "in use", as in, the kid started to throw a deuce and mom scooped him up and held him over the bushes.  I know we saw a kid wearing them in the Suzhou marketplace too!

If you can't imagine what these look like I found this article.  Needless to say, when these pants were in use, I wasn't rushing over there with a camera...

Conclusions

Either way, I can say that while I'm generally pretty happy to be a man, with all its privileges, I was even happier while in China.  Standing to pee rules.

I am not sure if this was temporary storage or just a urinal "out of order" sign.

I was also pretty happy to be a tourist.  The hotels we stayed in on our tour were kinda fancy, and that means that they all had regular western toilets and regular western toilet paper rolls right there in the stall. And that made for a happy chappy.

Pooping in China is an adventure in itself.

Getting Around in China

So I know next to nothing about getting around in China.  Except maybe that it's terrifying, and I can't imagine getting around there any way other than what we did.

The Bus

We were on a tour.  We were bussed everywhere in relative luxury.  Well, I would have called it luxurious if there had been a toilet in the bus.  But bathrooms are almost an unknown luxury, and a topic of a future post to themselves.

We saw China through the windows of the bus.  Some stories are best told in pictures:

Yes, that's a beggar.  On the ground.  Face down.  With one leg.   This is not the only beggar in this condition we saw.

Out the window, we saw much interesting architecture.  And no real way to know what all of it was.

There was lots of space at the back of the bus.  Mona had room to stretch out.

The buses are huge, and the mirrors they use that stick out way into the front amused me.

Non-bus vehicles and traffic

The population density in China is ridiculous.  Over the top.  You can't imagine it if you've not seen it.  In Beijing, the roads are bumper to bumper traffic all over the city, pretty much all day long.  Buses, cars, all moving along at a decent pace, never as jammed as you'd think.  But it's very dense.

It's unclear whether it's because of the cost of cars, the density of traffic, the difficulty of navigation, a combination or something else entirely that drives it, but a lot of people drive scooters or bicycles instead of cars.  There were huge scooter drop off locations all over the place (I hesitate to call them parking lots, since they didn't look all that organized), and same with bicycles.  

Add to that the number of crazy vehicle hybrids.  We saw all manner of bicycle/scooter/auto hybrids. Franken-vehicles that boggled the mind.  Suffice it to say that traffic was incomprehensible to a westerner, and I'm sure glad we were on the bus. See some examples below:

Bicycle and scooter travel is so common they have their own light.  Note the green bike sign above the green pedestrian sign.

This feller's riding in the bike lane.  Many times the bike lane was fenced off as a separate lane.  Many times not.

And what the heck is this monstrous thing?  I'll tell you, it's no Elio... There were dozens of variations on the bike/car hybrid.

Ok, so this intersection makes no sense to me.  I could never drive here.  Or ride a bike.  Or pedestrian.

The Cab

Hoo boy, we only rode in one cab.  It was from the hotel to the Chinatown in Shanghai.  It was a white knuckler for sure, and being in the front seat made me so nervous.  The driver got us there safe, but I'm not hankering to get in another cab in China.  That stuff is scary from street level.

Me in the suicide seat with Kevin, Sarah, and Nicole in the back.  

Out the window of the cab.  Yes that's a bicycle under that enormous haul.  All those goofy pictures on the internet of people with stuff piled high on their vehicle or bike?  Yeah, those could all be taken in China.

Another bike just laden with stuff.

You'd think with all the craziness there would be accidents everywhere making it worse.  But there wasn't. We didn't really see any accidents that I recall.

Well, except that one.

While we were waiting to get back on our bus in Hangzhou, we were standing on the sidewalk when there was some commotion.  A scooter had slammed into a pedestrian crossing the street.  I didn't see it, but some in our group did, and it sounds like it was the pedestrian not paying attention.  Evenso, the scooter operator just nonchalantly sped away.

But that was it, and that wraps up our little discussion about Chinese traffic.  Next up, let's talk about toilets, people!

Shopping in China - Part 8 - What We Bought

Holy Hannah!  I know I thought a lot about shopping in China.  Eight posts?  Did we do anything else while we were there?  Oh hell, yes, but I found myself so fascinated by the whole shopping thing that I wanted to share it all with you.

Ok, so I talked a lot about what was available.  But what did I actually buy?  Too much.  Here's the list. Mona?  Did I forget anything?  Leave a comment below.

• Lasers (green and purple)
• Poopoo pillows
• Beats earbuds
• Personalized jade stamps for the kids
• Custom tailored suit and shirt
• Megaphone kit
• Family ball Jade statue
• Chairman Mao's little red book
• Souvenir book with photo from Tien an men Square
• Dragon Well tea.  What looks to be an infinite supply.
• Power brick for charging phones mid day.
• A piece of a custom plate that had my caricature on it.
• Sweet bamboo hero plaque from the Great Wall adventure
• Great wall T-Shirt size XXXL
• Leather jacket size XXXXL
• Hao snacks for the kids
• Little bottles of Erguotou
• Spirograph toys for the kids

Nicole bought

• A set of fake watches for her and her dad
• Silk scarves for her and for gifts for very specific folks.
• Simple pearl jewelry
• Pearl infused skin cream
• New luggage to hold all the stuff her crazy husband bought
• Butt pillows (I think they're called seat cushions, but butt pillows sounds better) for the flight home.

I think that's our swag inventory from the trip.  I'm sure I'll get corrected in the comments if I'm wrong.

Shopping in China - Part 7 - The Black Market

In the last post I described what it was like to go to Chinatown in Shanghai.  I really enjoyed it.  But there was a dark side to it, too.  And that's what I'm here to tell you about.

Brian kind of touched on it while we were in the bus in Beijing.

I've talked about the mosquitoes before, and why dealing with them was a bad idea.  It's more than because the currency might be fake, but also because they deal in counterfeit merch.

Counterfeit merch in China is so commonplace that people around the world know about it.  It's a running gag for everyone.  It was in fact, so commonplace that Nicole's dad actually asked her to bring him back a counterfeit. Counterfeits are bona-fide Chinese souvenirs, in some kinda weird way.

Brian did let us know that counterfeit merchandise was illegal.  The mosquitoes sell fakes, but they are also beggars and people know to stay away from them.  The Rolex store in the Wangfujing marketplace, however, sells real Rolex watches, and they would be punished heavily if they were caught selling counterfeits.

Even if the real thing is made in China, then, that real thing is exported and branded in the country. Imported goods from businesses of other countries are taxed heavily, so all genuine items from outside of China are more expensive than they would be in their country of domicile.

The point is, you don't go to China to buy a Rolex.  No one does.  You go to China primarily to by fakes.

There's a weird thing here that Brian and Celery both explained to us.  The Chinese people love our brands, so many of them that can afford it make periodic shopping pilgrimages to the United States to buy all kinds of things.  The Nautica fleece Brian was wearing one day?  Purchased on a shopping holiday to the U.S. Celery told stories of coming to California to shop at outlet malls.

But the illegality of selling fakes doesn't mean it's not done.  Somewhere between the mosquitoes and Wangfujing, there's a seedy underbelly, a black market, and it manifested in a way that surprised me.

Last post was about Chinatown in Shanghai.  It was a real treat for legit shopping, but they have their back-alley shenanigans, too.

Scattered all over the streets of Chinatown were dozens of hawkers that held in their hands a laminated, foldable card that showed everything from Rolex watches to Samsonite luggage to Coach purses.  They were laid out almost like little JCPenney brochures in that you could see pictures of the different items and you could kinda catalog-shop.

Like everyone else in China, these folks were out for the hard sell.

We had already purchased way too much to bring home in the luggage we brought, and we were scouting for luggage in the various shop stalls, but one of these hawkers came up to us and I actually bit.  I pointed at luggage and made it known that I was looking for a big suitcase.

The hawker indicated that we should follow her to her shop.  Which she was standing nowhere near.  You see, she was the bait, and the shop was fishing for customers.  The hawkers would walk around the entire marketplace looking for someone to bring back to the shop.

Ok fine, we figured, we just have to follow her over to her stall and we'll see what she has.  The hawker took off like a shot.  Not everyone walks so fast in China, but she was trucking, and with so much to carry already, we struggled to keep up.  But she kept checking behind her to make sure her fish were still on the line.

She darted down an alley, and we paused.  She was indicating that we were to join her up a dark staircase on a higher floor of a completely unmarked building.  So that didn't give us a great feeling.  I was ready to go in, but Nicole is smarter than I am and staunchly refused.  We indicated to her that we were not going there. I don't remember exactly what was said, but the hawker changed direction and took us around the corner and down a shallow alleyway.  At the end of this little alleyway was a door.

She gave a distinct knock.  Not the "shave and a haircut" knock, but one I believe was to be taken as a signal. Like being in a 1950's spy movie.  The door was opened from the other side.

The door opened into kind of a courtyard/alleyway.  Open to the air, and it was like a little street between buildings.  Seemed weird for there to be a door at the end of an alley that opened into another alley.

We walked a little ways on this internal alley and knocked at another door.  This one opened up and we stepped inside.  I was shocked by what I saw.

The room was about the size of a small strip mall store.  Lined around the outside walls were purses, bags, other artifacts.  There was a glass case full of watches.  There was a selection of suitcases.

I can't stress enough how much the inside of what looked from the outside to be a makeshift Chinese backstreet hovel looked like a western department store.  The transition was so jarring that I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  Yet at that moment, I knew it for exactly what it was: a black market department store.

Well, we looked at the merchandise.  We were there, so why not?  It wasn't clear whether this was illegal counterfeit merch, or whether it was illegal genuine merch being sold in China without paying taxes or worse, stolen.

Sadly, they didn't have what we wanted.  We had to argue that while we would absolutely love to buy something from them, they were not selling what we wanted, but that we were still willing to deal.  The hawker escorted us from the premises and back into the streets of Chinatown where she escorted us to a more legitimate looking streetside shop where, unbeknownst to the hawker, Nicole had tried to find a suitcase earlier in the day.

Funny thing is, we ended up buying a suitcase from that store.  We found one that met the size and wheel needs.  It wasn't a Samsonite.  It wasn't even an imitation Samsonite, but it was a luggage, and that was that.

But we recounted this later to the tour group when we met up, and they had a similar experience.  Except Celery took them to a back-alley business that she knew to be safe (who knows?  It could have been the same one).

The story they got from her is that these things are all over Chinatown, and that what can happen is that the tourist goes to one of these, and when they get there, the proprietors lock the door until the tourists buy something.  That is, you're imprisoned until you pay to get out.  We are lucky in that it didn't happen to us, I suppose, but it was an interesting possibility.

So that's the black market.  That's pretty much everything I have to say about shopping in China.  When touristing to any new destination, shopping for unique and fun things is always a treat for me, and next post, I'll list out the things we bought while we were there.

Shopping in China - Part 6 - Chinatown in China

The last day of our China trip was in Shanghai.  Many of us were exhausted with the cultural attractions, and we just wanted to do some shopping.  I think that the two things we skipped out on that day were the bullet train, which reaches speeds around 220 mph, and the rug factory.  Not wanting rugs nor being that enchanted with a long wait and another fee to ride a train, we opted to have an easy morning.

We had Celery write down on a piece of paper where we were going, and we got in a cab to go down to a popular shopping area that they call Chinatown.  That being where our dinner arrangements were for that evening, all we had to do was lounge around there all day, collecting souvenirs, of course, and wait for the rest of the group to wait up for us.

We slept in and had a late brunch, followed by a trip to Starbucks, where we ran into someone with a sweet hat that I had to have a picture of.  Here's Kevin, modeling that hat:

Kevin models the sweet "Comme des Fuckdown" hat.  He also seems to be modeling HTML gang signs, too (angle brackets "< >")

So we had the hotel hail us a cab.  The cab driver didn't speak a lick of English, so it was good that Celery had written down our destination.  The cab ride was something else.  In a future post, I'll detail the "white knuckle rides of death" that every commute in major Chinese cities seem to be.  I'd rather be a pedestrian in Boston.

Anyhow, we pull up to Chinese Chinatown.  The place is a massive outdoor market the likes of which we hadn't seen yet.  Street after street of little shops.  These weren't the little food shops in the Suzhou market, nore were they the American style department stores of the Wangfujing Marketplace.  The best equivalent we'd seen thus far was the back alleyways of Wangfujing.  Each little store was clean and full of its own set of Chinese souvenirs.

Here's a little video clip to give you an idea of what it looked like:

There were stores that specialized in silk scarves.  There were stores that specialized in luggage.  There were stores that had electronics, and jade figures, and pillows, and toys.  The closest equivalent to these shops I'd ever seen would be either in a Mexican border town or a place like the port cities you visit on a cruise.

And everything was negotiable.

Before we left for China, we were warned to negotiate for absolutely everything.  The mosquitoes afforded the most obvious opportunities to negotiate, where you really didn't care whether (and often hoped) they walked away. But we were warned to negotiate with everyone for everything.

The rate of negotiation was variable by city, however, according to a guidebook friends in our group had.  In Beijing, we were warned to start at about half the offered price.  In Shanghai, however, it suggested we start at 10% of the offered price.

That's right; we were advised to start by asking for a 90% discount.

Now, "ask" is a bit of a misnomer.  Because they didn't speak much English, the proprietors of the stores often would tap out a price on a calculator in RMB, meaning you had to do a quick mental calculation to get to USD.  Then they'd almost shove the calculator into your hand, a gesture we understood as "you don't like that price?  Name your price."  And we'd tap out the same number they had typed, less a zero.

And oh, the uproar!  The feigned offended reaction to our horrendous effrontery!  They would shake their heads and wave their hands and often would just wave us off, as if to say, "You're not worth dickering with.  Too low."  But most often, they knew you wanted the item and that it was now down to price.  They'd punch a counter offer into the calculator, and eventually you'd either come to a number or you wouldn't, but you could always walk two stalls down and try again with the next vendor that had similar items.

It really did become kind of a game.  I had things I knew I wanted to get.  Lasers for the nephews, for example.  A loudspeaker to wear around your neck (the tour guides all used them, and I'd never seen such a a thing, so I of course had to look for one).  Beats audio headphones.  Silk scarves.

And they were all to be had in Chinatown.

We walked around all day, picking up new toys as we went.  Here's a couple things we didn't buy:

A cat-based thermos for kids.  You know, for "happy drink time"!

You'd think I would have heard of these before, but yes, that's anime girl mouse pads with interesting wrist rests.  Of course, you can get these at alibaba.

The second picture here was taken at a toy store where they had for sale an entire wall of Monchichi.  That's right!  Oh so soft and cuddly!  Those Monchichi!

One of my favorite shopping episodes happened about midway through the day.  Nicole was in shopping for scarves in a more upscale shop.  I was feeling silly, so she would ask me how I liked the scarf she had on, and I would look at her and say "Ooooh!" and then I'd look at the say "One dolla, one dolla!"  The sales lady took me as joking and laughed and patted my chest and said, "One dolla?  For you FREE!" grinning so wide.  The whole experience was just awesome.

At one point, I was left alone with a camera in an open square.  I decided to give you a 360 degree view, but you know me.  Sometimes I get out of hand:

So that was Shanghai.  I really enjoyed shopping there.  But there is one tale left to tell of Shanghai.  And it is a tale of the seedy side of Shanghai shopping.  The underworld.  Come back for Part 7 of Shopping in China - The Black Market.

Shopping in China - Part 5 - The Suzhou Market

In Suzhou, we took a canal cruise.  There are canals all over the place, and you can get in a little boat with an outdoor deck and cruise down the river.  We had a good time on the ride looking at the houses along the river, and we even saw a few weddings.  I believe we ended up being in as many pictures as we took.

Celery told us that the dialect in Suzhou had similar words for beautiful and ugly, and that it was poor form to get them mixed up. "Ah yu yu" means lovely, and "Ah ya ya" means unattractive.  Because it's so easy to associate with "Aye yi yi", it's easy to remember the difference.

So when we saw all the brides along the river, a few of us catcalled from the boat, "Ah yu yu!"  Luckily we didn't get it wrong.

To give you an idea of the size of the boat was vs the canals, have a look:

The boat barely fit down some of the narrow "canal"-leyways.

Also, along the canals were the back of peoples' residences.  Stone steps often led right down to the water. We saw one lady washing her produce in the canal.  The same canal into which we were leaking oil and gas out of our boat engine.  You'd usually see some plants that they were growing, and some laundry hanging nearby.  This is a good example:

So what does this have to do with shopping?  Well, this little riverboat tour was what we took to get to the marketplace.

This market was not for tourists.  This market was for locals.  This was the real Chinese market.  We were warned not to take pictures of individual people, as they are proud, but poor.  They don't like their photos taken if it's because they look poor.  This was the food that the locals lived on.  This was where they walked or used a motor scooter to get to for family supplies, maybe daily.

It was a narrow open-air market. The stalls generally consisted of a tabletop with some bowls or pans of either raw meat, vegetables or fruit, or even pans of cooked food.  We'd been warned sternly not to eat this stuff or I would have tried something.

So I can't remember what was in the bowls, but I think that the front left is chicken heads, the front right is whole baby birds of some kind, and midleft is chicken legs/feet.

Who knows what these are? Hit me in the comments to tell me!  Note that we're all taking pictures of this stuff, and that many of us have beer. 

I believe that these are congealed blood cakes in a big bowl of water. 

There was a very large stall that sold a lot of live animals.  They had cages of rabbits, chickens, other birds.   

You have to keep the veggies in cages or they run away.  China is a weird place...

Ok, so I don't know what these all are.  I assert that it's probably organ meat.  Literally, I think that one on the front left is some kind of animal penis.

A selfie back along the market where it was covered.  Photobombed by Kristin.

A giant bowl of live toads or frogs. 

And you can see below some of the food that was waiting to be purchased, killed, cut up, and cooked:

The Suzhou marketplace was so very different from the other marketplaces we'd been to, but it was enough to convince me that this was an authentic market.

Next up, Part 6 - Chinatown in China!

Shopping in China - Part 4 - The Wangfujing Marketplace

We really saw three big markets for shopping that I can describe: the Wangfujing market in Beijing, the rural food market of Suzhou, off the river tour, and Shanghai's Chinatown.  I'll tackle each one in a separate post starting with:

Beijing

The Wangfujing market was a delightful mix of odd places.  It combined elements of street markets and department store shopping.  The main thoroughfare was like a large outdoor mall, not far off what you'd find in America.  They had a McDonalds, a Gucci store, and other name International brand stores that if I could remember, you would recognize.  To the left of the Dongan Dept. Store in the pic below, you can see the rightmost 1/3 of the Rolex logo.  These Rolexes?  Not fake.  And not cheap.

Yep, that's the Dongan department store.  "Like, that place is totally dongin', dude!"

When we first got off the bus there, we stopped at an apothecary.  This was a very interesting introduction to Chinese medicine.  Most of what you could find here was roots and herbs.  The idea was that for whatever ails you, simply take home this root or that herb and make a tea out of it, and all will be well.  Sounded a bit crazy and homeopathic to me.  Yes, this is where you get Medicinal Slices:

Yes, I'd like a slice of medicine, please.

That's kind of funny about China, too.  At some point, someone in our party (let's pretend it was Nicole, but I can't remember now) wanted Tylenol.  I looked high and low for something other than an herbal remedy in every little shop we stopped in, but we never found anything like it.  Seriously, that whole country is just crying out for a Walgreens!

The first pharmacy we stopped in was all roots and stems and leaves.  There did appear to be a more westernized pharmacy, right on the main street of the mall, so we tried there.  They had medicines for more dire afflictions.  When we walked in, they showed us a little laminated card that listed things like diabetes, gout, and other diseases you manage, not cure.  I actually asked them about one or two of the medications, but what they offered was something like a two month supply of something or other, and it was not cheap, so we passed.

The part I liked best about the Wangfujing market was the side streets.  I think that was true in most of China, and most of life, in fact.  I like the side trips, the dark alleyways, the unexplored corners.  Taking a narrow path off the main Wangfujing drag, you enter what really seemed like the market to me.  Dozens of open air booths, mashed in side-by-side, crammed with trinkets and trash, all waiting to be bartered for.

There were little black plates, little red books, little red lucky tassels on hooks!

Oh crap, I went Seuss there for a minute.... sorry about that.  The point is that there are endless little oddities in these booths.  Little bits of artwork, kids toys, electronics, t-shirts.  The variety was dizzying.  I don't recall buying anything at this market, but we did a lot of browsing.

Best shirt I saw there.  I love Beijing, too!  But where would you wear it?  To the kids' school?  

We actually went through a little store behind this twisty maze of street vendors that had leather coats.  I have always kinda wanted one, so we shopped there.  Of course, I tried on an XL first.  I'm a big guy, so an XL is a natural first try.

And in doing so, I got to relive Chris Farley's "fat guy in a little coat" routine from Tommy Boy (minus the rippage).  So, the sizes run a little smaller there, then?  Ok, fair warning.  But c'mon!  I tried on the 3XL coat and it was tight too!  As that was the largest size they had, I didn't have to argue much that I didn't want to buy anything.

Ultimately, I ended up at that Dongin' department store shown above.  Their ground floor was a cool toy store with some really neat toys in it.  Robots, artwork (and crap, too), but as we went up the escalator, we found more clothes for men and women.  We had to hit the restroom, and on the way out of this restroom on something like the 5th floor, we were accosted.

Not by mosquitoes, so much as just really aggressive sales women.  And they wanted me to buy shirts.  Oh, boy did they.  But I didn't want a shirt.  Not there.  Not then.  But I had been looking at leather coats about an hour earlier.  And they had leather coats.

This particular saleslady was relentless, and we started haggling on price.  I didn't want to pay what they were asking, and she didn't speak much English.  But she barked at me what she knew.  These words came out abruptly, in almost a shout.  Imagine a little Chinese saleswoman yelling at me "Finish!" (meaning, "this is my final price") and "Bigger!" (meaning, "you need to come up in price") and somewhat less understandably "Flanders!" (meaning, ... err... I had no idea what she meant).

Eventually we settled on $30 for a very nice faux leather jacket.  Size?  XXXXL, the biggest they had.  Yep, I'm nearly too fat for China.  I'm a big guy, but I'm not enormous.  Some people I can only imagine are turned away at the door.

I've already mentioned what it was like to see the open air food markets in Beijing, so I won't recount that here, but I can say we ended our day at a nice little pub place in the middle of the Wangfujing mall area quaffing beer, where earlier, we'd watched the Gucci store guys play a game of "pick the booger and try to wipe it on your friend." People watching is even more entertaining when you have no idea what they're saying and they're being childish.  We were hoping maybe they'd play the "cup a fart and waft it" game, too, but they didn't.

Up next, the Suzhou market.

Shopping in China - Part 3 - The Mosquitos

One of the first things that the tour guides told us about shopping in China was to beware of the mosquitoes.

And they're not talking about the blood-sucking kind.  At least the insect kind.

No, this term mosquito very aptly describes a class of merchant - a peddler, maybe - very common in touristy areas of China.  They wait for you to depart tourist attractions and areas and then swarm onto you like mosquitoes smelling fresh blood.  And in some places, like exiting at the north end of the Forbidden City in Beijing, they were so dense it felt like crawling up out of a grave to fresh air just to be free of them.  In that case, it seemed like half a city block of densely packed mosquitoes all pawing and fawning and showing and for a claustrophobe like me, it was a gauntlet of “hell no.”

Our first real experience with mosquitoes came after the very first factory place we went, the Pearl factory.  Nicole and I weren’t the last ones out, but by the time we came out, we were greeted by members of our bus looking into little suitcases that the mosquitoes had brought by.  The first one I saw had a case full of watches.  Mostly Rolex.  All fake.

What caught my attention was that not all fakes were created equal.  There was quite a bit of negotiation over a particular Faux-lex that had a sweep hand.  These mosquitoes would ask $30 and negotiate down to almost nothing for watches with discrete second hand movements, but offer them $20 for these and they acted indignant.

With that encounter, I learned to be very careful about what was what.

But you can’t swat at these mosquitoes.  No, these are people, and even if they are not behaving decently, turns out you can’t hit them.  Our “swatter” was the Chinese phrase “bu yao” (pronounced “boo yow”, meaning “no want”).  We started off by saying it pleasantly enough, except they persisted and persisted.

Until our tour guide informed us that you can’t be giggling or smiling when you say it.  Of course, because it sounds like “booyah”, I had trouble saying it with a straight face.  After that advice I could be found walking through the mosquitoes angrily muttering bu yao, bu yao, and suppressing my giggles.

But that didn't always work.  The slightest interest, and that means that these mosquitoes will bite until they draw blood.  On the third day, we were going into the Hutong to have lunch with a local family.  This was certainly one of the coolest parts of the trip.  The Hutong was a style of neighborhood that's been almost wiped out.  It is characterized by narrow alleyways, and houses with little courtyards.

Also, poverty.

The Hutong district in Beijing has been preserved and allowed to stay as an example of the old style of living, but the people who populate the neighborhood seem to be relatively poor.  Our tour gave us the opportunity to ride into the Hutong on a bicycle rickshaw and have a local lunch cooked by a husband and wife team in their own home.

We departed the bus at the entrance to the Hutong and were swarmed by the mosquitoes as usual.  There was a woman selling silk bags and little purses that Nicole liked, and so she bought a bunch of them.  Nicole, looking for a fake watch for her dad, expressed interest in one gentleman's wares.

She wanted the nice sweep hand watch, and was willing to part with a twenty for it, but he was not having it. Yet he still wanted to make a sale, and started offering combinations of the other watches in the case for lower and lower prices.  He latched onto her and would not let go.  He knew she had money from her previous purchase and no amount of bu yao would get him to leave us alone.

But we figured that we'd soon be on a rickshaw and riding into the Hutong, and therefore we'd be away from these mosquitoes, especially this one.  We figured wrong.

We boarded our rickshaw, and our rickshaw operator started pedaling down a narrow alleyway.  A block away from where we started, we relaxed into our seat, grateful to be away from the mosquitoes.

All of a sudden, someone talking to us from the left.  "Two for twenty!"

The guy was on a bicycle, and he'd caught up to our rickshaw!  He was still trying to make the sale!  He had latched on to us suckers, and was sticking his proverbial proboscis into our ankles.

And as our driver angled around corners, hurried down narrow alleyways, and dodged oncoming bicyclists and mopeds, our mosquito held on.  Then he did something crazy.

He threw his case with all his watches into Nicole's lap!  And all of a sudden, she was shopping in her lap! And negotiating out the window of a moving rickshaw!  In the craziness, I can't really remember how everything went down, but I think ultimately she grabbed three of the watches, stuffed a $20 bill in the case, and tossed the case back at the mosquito.

He had his sale, and she had a few watches.  And we were able to have a very nice lunch in the Hutong with a family that kept wicked big and colorful crickets in little cages hanging on the wall that they occasionally took out to the cricket fights (no kidding).

After lunch, we came back out into a swarm of some of the same mosquitoes that had chased us into the Hutong.  As we were preparing to leave, one of the mosquitoes we recognized grabbed up a bike with a kiddie seat on it.  In getting on the bike, she seemed to break the child seat.

And on top of it, we don't think the bike was hers.  We think she was "borrowing" it so she could make the sale!

And she rode us down, again with a harrowing Indiana Jones-style chase through the narrow streets of the Hutong.  Nicole was yelling at her "No, No!"  But the woman persisted until our rickshaw driver turned to her and shouted "NO!"  He was our hero of the minute, and we couldn't stop laughing.

We were warned as sternly against buying from the mosquitoes as not to eat street food.  We figured it was to ensure that our sales went to our tour guides or people that gave them kickbacks, but they did offer some good reasons not to purchase from them.  The best reason they offered was that we have no idea what counterfeit Chinese money looks like, and that these people are quite likely to take large Chinese bills that tourists give them and return the change as counterfeit and pocketing the difference.

That didn't really stop us from buying the occasional thing from them, though.  Never had any real problems with it.

Next up, Markets!