After getting back from the Forbidden City, we rested for a bit at Cece's apartment before heading out to see some markets. I've been very excited about seeing them, especially to see all of the brand name knock-offs, some of which apparently can be pretty good. I was also excited to lern better bargaining skills.
This market is located in a huge multi-story building. The workers officially work here even though the whole business is technically illegal. However, they do pay a revenue tax which can become pretty big, so if they ever get cracked, it's usually not by the government but by the brands whose fakes they are selling.
I wish I could have taken more photos but I got shouted at. I did get to watch Cece bargain for a shirt I really wanted to buy. Being white, I was offered a price of over 200 yuan. Cece frowned so I shook my head and stared walking away and the lady dropped to an amazing 170 yuan. Still not satisfied. Cece started saying lower, the lady started resisting, so Cece grabbed my hand and started walking away. We agreed that 50 yuan would be reasonable so she made that offer but kept walking away and shaking her head as the lady kept dropping her price. We were about to turn the corner and disappear when the lady shouted something extra loud, Cece grabbed my hand and said "Got it" and I got the shirt for 50 yuan.
Just a block away from this market is a very upscale shopping mall called Sanlitun Village.
Contrary to what you might expect, these views did not impress me at all. Not because they weren't magnificent, which they absolutely were, but because I was still under the shock of something I had seen earlier: The Great Wall.
Just joking. This photo is from today. What we saw yesterday was a different kind of wall.
For the record, Cece saw this first.
Turns out that Abercrombie and Fitch bought Hollister and is now making it be the "Southern California" version of Abercrombie. My trip is very well-times because a new Hollister store is opening on this mall, a very short bus ride away from Cece's place. The entire week leading up to the store opening, male Hollister models are standing outside the store for 7 hours each day. They let us take pictures. I felt at home, although most of the models were either British or German, and SoCal doesn't actually have such a high density of well-built guys.
Afterwards, these guys paraded through the mall to their hotel and many people followed them, including Cece and me. As we were tailing behind, two guys broke off from the group and walked with us. One invited us to a pool party the whole group was going to later that evening. He didn't know where it was but told us to come. hmmm. I think he was just fooling around and we ended up going back home and falling fast asleep, after looking through the photos 10 times.
Cheers,
Nina.
No comments:
Post a Comment