Around ZZ

One our way to dinner, we walked around on this one nice night in ZZ. Just wanted to share some pictures with you.

Erqi Pagoda that was under construction earlier. But they fixed it quickly!

It's the new thing -  lettuce as decoration in flower pots

They do have some cute window decorations.

If you all didn't know: My name is Goda and I'm six years old. Here are the dvds that I buy. :)

Shopping in China

      When you go to another place, whether it be the next town over, the next state over, the next country over, or even as far the other side of the world, odds are your desire to shop will follow you there. So it will be no surprise to you when I tell you that I’ve gone shopping here in China! :O

      So you enter a store. Let’s just say out of simplicity that the store is called Vero Moda (love this store!). Immediately upon entering, one or two of the eight sales people (remember the store is probably as big as two of your living rooms) attach themselves to you. They stand pretty much half a foot away behind you and they follow you as you walk through the store browsing. If you touch something, they will immediately come closer and start saying random stuff in Chinese (because I obviously understand that ) probably telling you how amazing said item is. This continues until you leave the store all claustrophobic and feeling like a burglar.

      One time I stopped and looked at the sales people while doing the “no” hand motion and the “shoo don’t bother me motion” to no success. I even once tried the “sit” “stay” while I slowly walk away commands like I would to a dog, but that still did not work.

      Needless to say, I guess shopping in China is a communal experience (just like everything else) and you are meant to share it in a close and personal way with every sales person in every store that you decide to shop in. Unfortunately, I was not a fan of this type of shopping experience since I hate being followed and made to feel like I’m being watched because I might steal something. As such, I probably won’t be procuring many things while here in China. L

Rainy Xi'an- around town

 Caligraphy brushes. Tons and tons of them.

 China street. In the rain.

 Delicious looking bread in the Muslim Quarter.

 Man hard at work. Lamb skewers.

 Walking in the rain.

 Wild Goose Pagoda. No I don't come up with the names for theses.

Hour long fountain and light show.

Antique market street. Abandoned due to rain.

Why does it have to rain when I go sight seeing! I think I need to have a chat with the big guy... to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Ooh China - A few odds and ends

Brandon and I met another foreign teacher who took us out to show us the town (thank god for her! She knows a place where you can easy bake your own cake!!). Here are a few Ooh China moments I ran into while gallivanting around town.

Our first stop was good old Dunkin Donuts to grab a nice iced coffee (ice is a rare commodity here: it’s either unavailable or it could be full of bacteria and whatnot so you don’t want to use it). I was checking out some donuts and this is what I found:  Pork Floss.

 Ooh China! First off, why do you put pork on your donuts? And two, what the heck is pork floss?! Do I even want to know?

Our next stop was good old Carrefour, which is the French version of Walmart. It looked ultra promising and I think I’ll be able to find a few “luxuries” there when I’m in need of some good ol’ USA homey feelings. Anyways, I came upon this aisle:

Really China? You need a whole aisle for soy sauce?! I didn’t know you had 298,753 different choices. I guess when you use something a million times a day, you want to have “variety”. Whatever floats your boat! (It also kind of goes with the Chinese saying of 我是出来打酱油的, which literally means "just looking for soy sauce" aka" mind your own business")

A few aisles over, I discovered this:

All I have to say about that is that I’ve never seen so many random flavors of oreos ever in my life. Chinese like choices. Lots of them.

And last but not least, we took a stroll through the night market and I came upon this sight:

Nothing really shocking since the Chinese don’t have any rules of the road. But still. First off, this car appears to be facing the wrong way (as you can tell by the fact the sign is not facing the driver’s seat) on the street, and two it’s illegally parked (along with another 10 cars on the same road). Could someone tell me why bother with these signs if no one follows them and if the police don’t enforce them? 

Oooh China, not even during  a little stroll through our city do you cease to amaze me. Will I still be able to find as many Ooh China moments towards the end of the year as I do at the beginning? Challenge accepted!

How to procure a couch in China

As I sit on my lovely, albeit not as soft as desired, newly procured couch, I recall the occurrences of my last two days.

Said couch

One would normally think that buying a couch would be relatively simple. I mean if you wanted a lightly used cheap one, you could look on craigslist or drive around town in your car scavengering the alleys. Or if you wanted a new one you could choose one of the many furniture stores around such as Value Shitty Furniture, uummm I mean Value City Furniture (hehe) or go higher end with Luxury Furniture and Lighting (Really ppl? Selling luxury furniture and that's the best name you can come up with?!). You're couch shopping experience would consist of going to the store, telling the sales person what you want, giving your address and then coughing up an arm and a leg or just a few bucks, depends on which store you went to of course, and then sitting around Indian style on your floor waiting for the thing to be delivered. And that would be it. A child could do it!

Can you spot our couch?

However, my experience was slightly different. The day started with my mother and I heading out to the whole sale fabric store. Seems like a logical start to my couch story, right? Well the fabric store did not have our desired fabric, lace, so we just for kicks walked up this escalator that hasn't been used for years to the second story, still holding on to our hopes for Chinese lace. Well, no dice on the lace, however, we did stumble upon a whole room full of furniture! Do the Chinese mean to hide such goods from us Laowais or is this really where a furniture store should be located according their ultra logical thinking?

Either way, after making a quick loop around, we found our victim; the loudest, smallest couch in the entire room that wasn't a ridiculous price. And now the fun begins. We got the price relatively easily but the delivery aspect was going to take a bit longer.

Since arriving in China, I have taken to carrying around a little red notebook in my purse to write down menu items that we like to eat in Hansi, pinyin and our own little description. So I take out my little book and start very kindergarden-ly drawing a picture of a couch and a house and then an arrow connecting the two with a question mark (can anyone guess what I'm asking with my drawing!!??). The Chinese lady who owned the couch was not having it or even attempting to understand me. Frustrated, we were about to walk away, when I remembered I have a very useful and awesome friend who speaks both English and Chinese, AND is only a phone call away (Alexix I love you!). Well I don't want to bore you but let me tell you what went down in these phone calls (there were three of them!). I would call Alexis and tell her my situation, she would them tell her coworker (who is a Chinese native), who would them talk to the shop lady. After that, the coworker would tell Alexis and Alexis would tell me. It's was a real life version of telephone! Well after three such phone calls we went from having to go down stairs and find our own guy to deliver the couch, to having the shop lady deliver the couch to us for free by the next day before10:30am. I was not part of the conversation so I have no idea how this change came to be, but I was too happy to care! I had just gotten a couch and somehow managed to get free delivery! This is what Charlie Sheen would call "winning". :)

Priceless

So the next day, at 10:30 on the button, my phone rings and I pick up my phone to hear the shop lady (I recognized her voice) screaming, well that's what it sounded like, at me in Chinese (doesn't she know by now I don't speak Chinese?). After saying yes and thank you over and over to her in Chinese, I just hung up the phone. I mean I obviously have no idea what she is saying! Brandon, Mom, and I ran down stairs and are looking around for a delivery truck to no avail. We're standing there looking and looking and then all of a sudden my Mom points to the left... And there is a little old lady with the biggest grin on her face on her adult tricycle pulling our couch. *Dramatic Pause* The Chinese deliver furniture on tricycles! Priceless moment. Oh, I also want to point out that the store was 10km away! That's not particularly a short distance via tricycle. Additionally, I am sad to report I did not have my camera on me since I had been distracted by the Chinese yelling on the phone, but I found this picture instead. It's pretty representative of what went on with our little old lady and her tricycle.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the story of how I got a couch in China.


Summary for those who don't want to read the whole post:
1. Go somewhere where no one in their right mind would expect to find a couch
2. Don't bother drawing pictures, they can't read those here
3. Always have a bilingual friend at your finger tips
4. If they say they don't deliver, just keep asking the same question in as many different ways as you can come up with until you get what you want (free delivery duh!)
5. Pay for your couch and go home to wait for it
6. Go pick up your couch from the old lady delivering your couch via tricycle.

Girl Talk

I experienced today what can only be described as a girl’s heaven and I can already tell you that I will not be able to explain the awesomeness that went down. We went to this no name mall somewhere in Beijing (don’t worry, I have a business card so I can return again!). Apparently, JinLan told me it has the best prices in all of China! It’s an unimpressive building that’s about five stories high and nothing special marking it. Inside, it’s not like a mall in the US where there is tons of open space for strolling and people watching. Instead, each floor is categorized according to item (jewelry, purses, clothes, etc) and it’s one seller after another packed right on top of each other. It’s kinda like souk in Morocco but cleaner and more organized and much much better quality things!

I wish I would have taken more pictures but it was such a chaotic mess inside that I totally forgot. In this building they have everything you could possibly imagine! They have shoes (I saw Uggs that I will be buying next time I go here!), and purses like you wouldn’t imagine (got me a real nice (fake) leather Chloe bag), clothes (beautifully loooong flowy colorful maxis and so much other stuff that my eyes couldn’t absorb it all), perfumes, electronics, watches, luggage, jewelry (I got a beautiful crystal ring!) and much much more. Yes, I realize that is a list of everything a normal mall sells, but it was in such a compact space, and the prices were so obscenely low. It was such a chaotic mess with all the sales people talking to you and pressuring you, all at the same time. Everywhere I looked there was more to see and more people asking you to buy their stuff (they really push their Louis Vuitton) . It felt like Andi always says: a birthday party where 100 of your friends show up so that you’re floating around trying to say hi to everyone and spend time with everyone but there are so many of them and only one of you and the moment you say hi to one person, another one shows up. My senses were on over load and I can’t believe I only bought as much as I did. That place is dangerous but so omg amazing! Shopping heaven! And for the record, everyone that said I won’t find clothes and shoes, was totally wrong. I found more than enough of anything and everything I would ever need! I know I did a bad job of explaining the mall but it was just wow! I wish everyone could experience it! Such a rush really!

That is all I have to say about that. I promise I will take more pictures of the mall next time I go, but I still don’t even think that would do it justice. It’s more of an experience than anything else. I’m still 
riding the high of the chaos!


Here is a pic of some other market but its very similar!