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!

Shopping in China – Part 2 – Tour Guide Shopping

I guess I've said a few things about our tour guides, but maybe not introduced them properly.  For each four-day leg of the journey (we spent the first four days in Beijing, then took a flight to Shanghai and bussed around there for four days), we had a different tour guide. 

In Beijing, our tour guide's "English name" was Brian.  He said that was a reference to Bryan Adams, because "everything he do, he do it for us."  He was a very engaging and entertaining speaker who generally got things started out in a fun direction every morning, taught us how to say a few things in Chinese, answered questions throughout the day, and helped us navigate and negotiate deals in the various marketplaces.

In Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou, our tour guide was a woman.  She went by the "English name" Celery, so chosen by her friends because she really loved celery when she was younger.  She was from Hangzhao, a fact that she told us with almost every breath.  I can't tell you how difficult it was to call someone a name that is an english word that isn't generally used as a name.  And this is from a man whose children are named Gamble and Random.  Go fig.

These tour guides were our lifeline.  They were our protectors.  They got our hotel rooms for us ahead of time so that we didn't have to wait to check in.  They kept our passports for us.  They knew where we needed to be and mostly kept us to a strict schedule.  We would have quite literally been lost without them, so we had to put our trust in them.  And they worked very hard for us.

I know I wrote that there were a lot of art and product-specific shops that we went to, and that we think the tour guides got a little taste of the action for inspiring us to buy the goods at those specific places, but there were other ways that the tour guides were compensated.  Each day, Brian or Celery would explain that there was something they could get for us - something that represented China, or a service they could set up for us.

Custom Suit

It's pretty common that you hear of someone that travels to China and has a suit custom made for them while they are there.  It's amazing to think of an entire suit being made within a few days.  On the bus on our first day in Beijing, Brian offered to schedule a tailor to come to our hotel room and take my measurements.  I jumped at the chance. and scheduled a tailor to come measure me on that first night.

They brought material swatches for the suit itself, and I picked out a narrow pinstripe pattern in black.  They showed me some shirt material, and I selected a lightly textured white fabric.  It was a very quick measuring process, maybe 15 minutes in the whole transaction, but I knew that I'd have the best fitting suit I'd ever worn.  The next night they delivered it and I tried it on. Now I just need that magic occasion to wear it!

In-Room Massage

That first day, Brian also offered to have masseuses sent up to the room to give us 90 minute foot and body massages, so we scheduled those, too.  $30 apiece, so Nicole and I both scheduled them.  We were not disappointed when two Chinese women came to our room and gave us our rubdowns.  We were still jet-lagged, so I'm sure I fell asleep during the backrub portion, but I distinctly remember the second part.

After rubbing down our bodies, the two women disappeared into the bathroom and had us sit up at the edge of the bed.  They brought out what looked to be a Wal-Mart bag full of diarrhea.  Ok, so it was just dark brown liquid, and there may have been some leaves in it, but it was completely sketchy.  We were instructed to put our feet in the liquid.  Then they tied the bags off and let our feet soak.

So in other words, they made feet soup.

They followed that up with a wonderful footrub that even my ticklish feet withstood just fine.

Stamps

On the bus, Brian told us of the ability to obtain jade animals in the shapes of the Chinese zodiac with stamps on the bottom that had the Chinese version of a name.  I jumped at the chance to have one made for Gamble and Random.  We ordered them on day 2, I think, and they arrived on day 3.  The little kits came with an inked wax glob to ink the stamp, and a cute little jade figurine with a stamp on the end.  Gamble's was a sheep, and Random's was a pig.

Oh, and just so you know, while Nicole's a dragon (Chinese royalty), I'm a rat.  I'm sure you always expected as much.

Unexpected little gifts

Brian gave us a couple unexpected little gifts.  He gave every one of us a map of Beijing and the surrounding area, which the map-inclined among our tour took great delight in visibly exploring, trying to figure out where in the Fuxing Hek we were.  He also gave us a pack of little Chinese bookmarks.  I think they were very small and easy to lose, though, since I don't remember seeing them after the unpacking.

Souvenir photos/books

Another thing we did as a group is take a couple group pictures.  One was in Tienanmen Square in Beijing, and the other was in a Garden in Suzhou.  These pictures were then printed and offered in a souvenir book of the area.  We picked up the one in Beijing but not the one from Suzhou.

Electronics

Brian seemed to sell us a lot of very Chinese artifacts, but Celery was from a different part of China. Shanghai is more Western, more hip.  She offered us the ability to order Beats by Dre headphones, power brick chargers, and those sorts of things.

I picked up a little brick charger to charge my phone when my battery is low.  It's already come in handy a couple times!

So that's what the on-bus shopping offered us.  Next up, I'll tell you all about the mosquitoes.  Oh, the mosquitoes.

Shopping in China - Part 1 - Bus Shop

I started writing this rather long series of posts over Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend, figuring it was a great weekend to reflect on the shopping scene in China.  Thing is, the whole experience is so interesting to me that I’m going to break it down into a few different chapters.  First up, I’m going to talk about shopping from the perspective of the bus.

A lot of the shopping that we did was really based around the bus.  Pretty much each morning our tour guides would tell us of something that we could get on the bus from them, and take orders, or tell us about something we could do in our rooms later for a fee.  If not that or we were going on the bus to go to one of the various factories

People ask us how the trip could have been so cheap for what we got.  Ultimately, it’s because the whole trip is like a time share deal.  They bring you over on tours of product-specific facilities, and you listen to presentations on the different types of classic art and products that China is known for.  You don’t have to buy, of course.  They don’t really pressure you.  But it is quite the education and sales pitch in each place, and you are a captive audience, so it’s easy to get excited about what you’re seeing.  The Chinese art can be really inspiring.  It was also said that these places were government-sanctioned and quality controlled, and that pieces would be the highest quality at these places.

At each place, you are handed a card.  Those cards identify which tour group/bus you are with.  We were not told explicitly, but we figured that they were used to kickback to the tour guides a part of the sale, giving the tour guide an incentive to sell us on the culture while on the bus.  Here are the places we went, and my opinion of each of them:

Pearl 

The Pearl Factory was the first factory we went to.  They sat us in a little room and explained to us that there are both freshwater and saltwater pearls.  They showed us that there are many different colors of natural pearls.  I knew that there were a couple different colors, but I was dazzled by the wide array of color choices.  They also suggested that the way to determine the difference between real pearls and fake pearls is to rub two together.  When rubbed, it should feel raspy.  And no matter the color of the pearls, the residue should be white.  We didn't spend big money here.  I think Nicole got Random some inexpensive jewelry and maybe a couple gifts and a pair of earrings for herself.

Jade

By the second day, I was thinking that it would be cool to get a jade dragon sculpture for my home office desk.  Something to inspire.  A thing of beauty, an artifact of power.  We got to visit the Jade Factory on the morning of the second day. 

They showed us a beautiful piece  Beautiful, the dragon thing with the man and the woman (look up the difference).  They are supposed to be bringers of luck.  They eat money, and they never poop, so they represent growing wealth and prosperity.  At prices starting at a few hundred dollars, I decided I wouldn't pick one up.

The second thing they showed us was the nested family ball:

The dragon and the phoenix represent the mother and the father and they are carved on the outermost ball.  The outermost sphere demonstrates that the parents protect the family.  Each nested concentric sphere is carved in place and represents a family member.  I really wanted to get one of these too, but the prices at the factory were similarly high.  I ended up getting a little one at a souvenir shop.  It wasn't the best jade, but it was a good reminder of family.

And we went and looked at even more beautiful statues.  There was a beautiful lithe dragon carved in light green jade that was perfect.  The sticker, however, kept me from even attempting a negotiation.  This particular item was priced at $2200.

Cloisonne

After climbing the Great Wall, we went to the Cloisonne Factory.  If you've ever seen one of those beautiful Chinese vases with lots of detailed enamel, that's probably Cloisonne.  They had the craftsman making things in front of us.  I could never have guessed how it's made.

First, they take a copper pot and bang it into shape.  They fire and smooth and fire and smooth the copper.  Then they create the outline of the designs that will appear on the pot out of metal and attach that to the pot.  Each metal ridge stands about a quarter inch from the pot. 

So then it's kind of like a color by number.  Enamel is painted into each space between the metal wires until the layers come up flush with the pot.  The enamel colors end up so vibrant and beautiful.  We didn't return with any examples of this work, but it is very pretty.

Silk Embroidery

We went to a place where they made embroidered silk wall hangings.  They dye the silk strands vibrant colors and then stitch them onto fabric one fine thread at a time, resulting in some incredibly detailed and vibrant portraits. 

The true master works of this type have one image stitched on one side of the wall hanging, and another totally different image stitched on the other, with no obvious threads or ends in sight.  These works of art were far, far too expensive for our blood, however, so we didn't pick anything up.

Other silk products

And the Silk Factory, we got to see how they take the silkworm cocoon and unwind it to get the thread.  They held one end and in their other hand they unwound the cocoon, while I took the center point of the thread across the room about 30 or 40 feet to demonstrate its strength.  As the one holding the thread, I was amazed by how strong a single strand of silk is.

Then they demonstrated how they take those threads and make sheets out of them, and how they then stretch those sheets one over the other to make comforters.  Many folks in our group were able to stretch out these layers and feel how strong the material was. 

At the Silk Factory, we had the option of buying comforters, sheets, and pillows, along with scarves, dresses, and all kinds of silkwear.  The pillows we bought have a pouch filled with "silk soil" sewed up into one side.  Silk soil isn't soil.  It's what comes out of the backsides of silkworms.  It's supposed to have medicinal properties.  Of all the purchases we made, this is the only one where I now think "What was I thinking?"  Then again, I bought silkworm poop, and that's amusing enough.

Tea Plantation

I really enjoyed the Dragon Well tea plantation in Hangzhou, where you can buy authentic Longjing tea (literally “dragon well”).  As you drive into the hills on the other side of the West Lake in Hangzhou, you start to see stepped crops growing on the hills, and you know those are the tea plants.  We got to take a tour of the plantation; they showed us how they dry the leaves.

The Dragon Well tea that we were served is supposed to be the best, and the tea they were selling us was the so-called "Empress" tea, meaning that these leaves were picked at the time of the year reserved for tea for royalty.  The tea leaves are more tender or something.

They sat us in a little room and taught us a little about tea.  They explained that there are three types of tea: green, oolong, and black.  Green tea is not at all fermented, whereas oolong is partially fermented, and black tea is fermented. 

They showed us how to pour the proper cup of tea.  Tea leaves steeped in a pot of freshly boiled water, then pouring the tea in a once, twice, thrice motion (for luck?).  They said that the tea leaves can be used many times.  The first cup is for aroma, the second has the best flavor, and after the fifth time, the leaves should be relieved of duty.

I bought quite a lot of this tea.  I really liked it while I was drinking it there, and as opposed to the poopoo pillows, I consider it among my best purchases.  I have a cup that my lovely bought me in Shanghai that has a bottom with a wire filter for steeping loose-leaf tea. I drink those five cups of tea every day.

Up next, Bus Shopping Part 2!