Shopping!

In China, things are cheap. Very cheap. So we decided to go dress shopping.

The Chinese shopping centers are amazing places. First there are some enormous, posh ones that are so expensive you will not see an unemployed-soul inside. These types of places are so concerned with fanciness that they supply umbrella bags so you won’t drip on the floor. Note Rachel demonstrating. The bathroom attendants also wear suits.

Next we have the less expensive style, where

you won’t be able to breathe for the crush of

people.

Here you can buy a pair of earrings for 5 kuai (Kuh-why) the equivalent

to a little under a dollar, a beautiful wedding dress, a pretty and

short dress for about two hundred kuai (roughly $33), and all your shoe needs. (Whole levels of shopping centers are devoted to high heeled shoes.) To the sides you will see some of the dresses.

Now we couldn’t afford a dress for two hundred, so we sought a cheaper option, and Rachel took us to an underground

shopping center. This form of underground

doesn’t mean underground as in against law,

but underground literally. This is the next level down,

and here you have to keep your handbags in front of you for fear of people with quick and devious fingers. (Pick-pockets weren’t wiped out in China in the “Oliver” era, you see.)

In the last two photos I’m wearing the two dresses we bought in the underground shopping center. I

call the pink one my “Alice in Wonderland Dress”, and the other my “Dress-with-Felicity-Sleeves” — from a book I read about a girl in the

1700s. So this is what we did before my birthday, and you might say for my birthday. These dresses were my birthday presents, along with my MP3 player.

So shopping in China is really a memorable experience, and it was really a lot of fun, what with the lunch of steamed buns and a stop at a dessert cafe for mango glutinous rice balls.

Who’s up for a day of shopping?