art 3 of Saturday in Shanghai with Paula and Maria
After many warnings from the Marco and our driver, they let us off at Shanghai’s famous Knock –Off Market. We quickly escaped the ‘professional shopper’ that tried to ‘Shanghai’ us from our van to their store and found our way into the maze of stalls. It is way better with 3 people, the vendors don’t have one person to concentrate their efforts on. If you usually get gifts from Paula, Maria or myself….don’t read further - you might ruin the surprise.
Paula was looking for Tag Heuer watches. We found a couple of stalls that had what we wanted and each stall attendant made sure to bang them on their palm and hold them up to our ears saying “they are best quality, best quality” This happened in more than one stall – so maybe the attendants were given an instructional video to watch before selling the watches. We could never hear what I think we were supposed to hear, but we figured it was a good sign that they didn’t fall apart in the banging.
We were also looking for North Face jackets and again we were successful. But the Galland and the Willliam’s clans better not get together at the same time because they will look like an ad for a North Face Catalog. I picked up a pair of Dior sunglasses, and a Prada purse. I couldn’t leave Paula alone when the bargaining was going on – because she would feel sorry for clerks and give them whatever they asked for. I am sure Maria would have gotten the hang of it if she didn’t have jet lag, but I don’t think there is any hope for Paula. After a couple of hours of wandering thru the stalls (it is very easy to get disoriented) we safely found our way out and got a taxi back to the hotel using our ‘taxi card’. A taxi card is a business sized card that you can get from almost any business or hotel in China that tells the driver where to take you. It also has instructions in English for the passenger such as “get a receipt from the driver…”. These cards are great, make sure you ask for one anytime you are in a store or hotel in China that you might want to return to. Most drivers do not understand English maps.
Side Note - I forgot to mention in the second Shanghai blog that at breakfast this morning Paula added soy sauce or maple syrup to her coffee - she thought it was milk.
