There was a lot of shopping this weekend. It began Friday night, when Mr. John the tailor met us at our hotel to see about making custom clothes. I gave him a very poor drawing of a crazy blouse with a lot of asymmetry I have had in my head for a while, and he says he can make it. I can’t wait to see it materialize!

Then, Saturday morning, a large group of us took the bus, then the metro to downtown Shenzhen to the Dongmen Market area. All together, the trip took over an hour. On the bus, we happened to meet a woman who spoke English very well and was going to the same place! This was comforting, since we weren’t exactly sure where we were going, or how the metro ticket machines worked. All of this turned out to be pretty clear, (the bus line we were on ended right at the metro station, for example) but it was nice to have her guide us anyway.

Once we left the metro station, we split up into smaller groups, thank goodness. Trying to navigate anything with a group of 12 people and no leader is pretty difficult, much less crowded, unfamiliar markets when no one really has any idea what is going on and the signs are mostly only in Chinese. My roommate Patti and I went with Susan, a retired teacher and administrator from Carlsbad who travels for much of the year. Susan is not very good with directions, but she’s great about walking up to people and finding out information, whether they speak English or not.

The markets are buildings filled with small stall type shops of similar type things. One area (sometimes a whole building, or a floor, or a hallway) was all clothes, another bags, another electronics, and so on. (And shops is really too strong of a word.) The first thing I bought was an Asian/80’s style tunic shirt with superfluous zippers. I was a little too excited about it, and paid full price—40 yuan, or about six dollars. If the salespeople don’t speak English, they tell you how much things are by showing the numbers on a calculator or their cell phone. When I started to walk away from the next thing I was interested and the lady waved the calculator in my face, saying “How much? How much?” I remembered this was the place to bargain. I typed in half the quoted price, as recommended in the guide books, and we went back and forth.

Then we figured out that some places don’t bargain. The only way I could tell for mostly sure was if I tried to walk away, they either follow, yelling, “It’s beautiful. OK? OK,” or they ignore you. Also, if a price was posted or marked, which it usually wasn’t, then it seemed pretty firm.

As the day went on, we found a few places that let us try things on, though most did not. Even though they stretched out the waistband as far as it could possibly go to show that they can even get big enough for us giants, it became quite clear that I should not buy anything I could not try on, since nearly everyone in China really is smaller than me. (Though, from the looks of some of our students and some people I have seen on the streets, even Chinese people may be trending larger.)

The Hongchi craft center was a very interesting place. It was mostly toys and junk on the first floor, but the second was mostly jade and pearls, which they would string for you. Unfortunately, by this time we were pretty dazed and overwhelmed, so we just wandered past table after table of jade and other beads. Now I wish I had had an interesting piece or two strung. Sorry Mom and Katie. (Susan and I nearly went back on Monday evening, but it’s an hour and a half each way, and we just couldn’t muster the energy.) At the end of this floor, we also stumbled upon a tea tasting at a tea shop. Surrounded by bricks of pressed tea, the proprietor brewed tea, then poured some out on to small statues, stirred the tea, then poured some more out, repeating this many times until it was ready to drink.

After a long day navigating a maze of shops and buildings, we were ready to head back to the metro. As we stood on the corner, trying to triangulate our position based on McDonald’s and KFC, hoping we were looking at the ones marked on the vague map in Patti’s guidebook (there seemed to be more of these fast food places now than when the book was printed), a young Chinese couple saw us looking confused and ran up, asking, “Can we help you?”

The Chinese seem to either not walk anywhere, or they believe that we cannot walk anywhere. We told them we wanted to get to the Metro station. Our conversation was a little awkward:

“Oh. That is not close. Where are you going?”
“We are going to Shekou.” (That is the suburb where we are staying.)
“That is very far.”
“We know. That is why we need to take the metro, and then the bus.”
They eventually sent us in the direction I thought we needed to go anyway (!), but they were quite worried we would not get there, so they wrote in a note in Chinese characters for us that says, “Please tell me how to get to the metro station.” They were so friendly!

We got about a block away from them and saw the first of the most helpful signs I have seen in China yet, green circles with the metro symbol, with an arrow pointing one direction! There was one every block! We didn’t even need to use our note. By the time we got home, I felt like I could get almost anywhere in China! Well, at least back downtown again.

Even though I had to go through customs to get to Macau, it was such a touristy place that this day felt like the first day I was really immersed in China. There are certainly other ways to get to know a country besides shopping, but as a whole day where I spent the majority of it outside our hotel, our chartered bus, and the company of all the rest of the teachers, it felt dramatically different.

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