No longer content with Cloud Nine mall’s conservative clothing (love its restaurants though), and eager for an authentic Shanghai shopping experience, I called up JiaoTong student Rose Hwang on Saturday and asked her where I could go to find a bazaar that would meet my simple demands. She suggested I pay a visit to Qi Pu Fu Zuang Shi Chang. (Qi Pu clothing market). Intrigued, I brought Connor “Foreign” Foran with me and took the metro to East Nanjing Road, then cabbed it from there.
This Qi Pu Fu Zuang Shi Chang is a multi-floored market inside a giant, dusty as hell building. It looked quite old and has yet to see a building inspection this century. From the outside its hard to tell what the market has to offer. We walked in and saw an endless maze of stalls and vendors. There were hundreds of shops on each floor, well over a thousand in total. It was tightly packed with no air flow, basically the largest fire hazard in all of shanghai (yes people were smoking inside, right next to highly flammable cardboard box shreddings and old receipts no one botherd to dispose of). Risking our lives and holding our belongings with a tiger grip, we ventured deeper into the chaotic shopping scene, bracing ourselves for all kinds of crazy we might run into.
Vendors sold their flashy D&G shoes, fancy hipster t-shirts and sunglasses, knock off bags, jeans, skirts, fake watches… it was all so much to take in. And thanks to Mr. Foreign’s presence, the store owners were chasing us in droves shouting in English, “COME TO MY STORE WE HAVE EVERYTHING YOU WANT! SUNGLASSES? GUCCI? JEANS? T-SHIRTS?” We were dragged, grabbed, beckoned, heckled, and tossed around. Certain vendors wouldn’t take no for an answer and stalked us from floor to floor. We were creeped out at first and feared for the worst, but finally took a look at what they had to offer (which of course was the same shit that everyone else had).
I picked up a couple t-shirts, including one of Doremon, whom local student Courdy concluded would be a fitting moniker for me for the duration of this semester, and one of a baby wolf from Jolly Sheep and Big Big Wolf(the cartoon our Chinese teacher said her 3 year old niece watches obsessively, though not a single student in our class could understand a word of it, despite a median age of 20).
mah shirts...
Connor Foreign took interest in a pair of really nice sneakers, and the salesman hastily threw them into a bag to hand to him. Connor opened the bag and upon further inspection realized the two sneakers were not of the same pair and in fact a half size apart, but they still fit anyway and for less than 200 kuai he decided it was a good deal. We walked out satisfied with our purchases and left the Qi Pu bazaar in high spirits, ready to leave behind the noise, the bargaining, the harassment, the stuffiness, the misspelled English printed on shirts, and everything else in between.
connor "wai guo ren's" shoes, size 11 and 12 respectively!
DORAEMON!!!!
ReplyDelete--haonan