Beijing 798 district

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July 1st Friday
Ok yesterday was a lot of fun,so today's blog will be very long. I had a lot of weird stuff happen to me. Remember those dark clouds I said in the earlier post? Well, it turned out we had a really bad thunder storm here at around 6am or so. So Dr. To decided we weren’t going to see the Great Wall yesterday. So instead he nominated yesterday as shopping day.

First we went to 798 factories which was literally an art district, filled with graffiti art, cartoons, sculptures paintings, and all kinds of different art forms. I have many strange cool and funny pictures of us at the 798 factory. Apparently the history behind it was; it started out as abandoned factories that were taken over by wandering artists. They did made all kinds of art in and around the district thus created the art district. Now we went into this store where I bought a few things and for whatever reason after I purchased the items the alarm went off and scared the crap out of me! I turned back to the lady who waved me off to go saying that I was fine but then the detector went off again. After I left I stopped and realized something—I think she didn’t charge me for 2 of the cards I bought. Something about the price she rang up didn’t match the price of the stuff I actually bought by about 10 Yuan. I bought a poster for 20 Yuan and 4 cards 5 Yuan each but the price rang up as just –40 Yuan….? So that’s why I think I set off the alarm—but oh well!

After that we went to eat at a European style place, when we entered though, me and Kristine were immediately stopped by this German dude, who asked us if we were American then he started speaking German to her. So of course me, because I went to school for German, decided I jumped in. I was a little disappointed in my German capabilities though, the man was very good in English and said he had a son in Tennessee, he also mentioned that he was a Berliner.
So then after the food we watched amused as this British guy was talking to the manager/boss of the store because his …money got wet….?? It was actually funny to watch because the woman were like 4ft tall and this dude was clearly 6 feet tall! She took the money only because this other Chinese guy said it was ok for her to take it. Then the British dude was all like “HIGH FIVE!” And the Chinese guy was like “OK!”
So then we left to go shopping in the silk market. THIS WAS DEFINITELY THE FUNNIEST EXPERIENCE BY FAR I’VE HAD IN CHINA! So at first we enter as a group of like 6. We go through the doors and down the escalator, but not 1 minute after we entered, one of our party members got snatched—yes literally snatched by a sales girl to buy a purse of some sort. So we all left, but then we realized “wait, he might not come back!” so we went back to make the rescue but by then he was already buying it so it was whatever. There were 4 floors in the silk market all filled with “potentially” cheap stuff. And I say potentially cheap because the goal of the sales people is to rip you off and your goal is to negotiate your price. I must admit it’s kind of difficult to do without a Chinese local who is familiar with the prices there to help you.
But I think I did all right. Actually I did better negotiating with the boys than I did with the female sale people! Afterwards I tried finding male sales people to negotiate with because they all ended up selling me at the prices I asked for! One girl stole my silly bands and my elastic bracelet in an attempt to get me to buy from her store! I laughed and told her she could keep the silly bands but I needed to elastic back. (Turned out she was still wearing them when we left the silk market too!) I don’t think I got ripped off too badly while I was there. My strategy, because I suck at math, was to basically name a price I would like to pay if I was in America and then convert it to Yuan from there. The only problem though is, just because it’s cheap n America doesn’t mean that’s the cheapest price I could go for in china…so that’s why I say “I didn’t get ripped off too bad” because I got it for cheap by American standards but probably not by Chinese standards. For example I got a shirt and pants from this girl for 450 Yuan which in USD would be about 80-90 or so dollars (I realized afterwards that I shouldn’t have went over 400 Yuan perhaps even 350 while negotiating but because we all had to meet at a certain time I didn’t have time to sway her into selling it to me for 400 or 350 because she was TOUGH but I REALLY wanted the clothes so I ended up going with it.) 90 dollars wouldn’t have gotten me a suit in china town Boston, maybe a child’s shirt, but not an adult shirt and pants to match. But all in all I think I did pretty well. The sales clerks were very cute and friendly and REALLY funny!! They were all good at English to it was strange, some could even talk in Spanish, German, Chinese, Korean, Russian and just about any language you could have imagined. So a lot of the boys played this game where they would say they were from some ridiculous country and see if the sales clerks believed them. It was actually really fun to lie to them a little. Since they were trying to rip you off I decided to have fun with some of the girls and just repeat everything they said back to them. I couldn’t believe how fast that hour and a half went by while I was in the silk market. Looking back now though I’m kind of glad we left when we did because I probably would’ve been sucked into getting more stuff.

After silk market we went back to the hotel for about an hour or so before heading out to eat dinner again. We talked a lot at the table with Cloud, who was one of the students that went with us on all our Chinese excursions. (How we figured out his name was another funny story for another post). After that we went to what was the equivalent of a Beijing times square. There were strange foods they were selling including scorpions, cockroaches, centipedes, star fish and other weird stuff. I videotaped most of my time there because you can a better view by video than through pictures. When we went into the video store I hit the jackpot with the k-pop cds. A lot of cds of super junior (in fact mostly super junior), 4minute, b2st, shinee, wonder girls, girls’ generation, rain, etc. so I ended up buying 4 cds and I think a DVD. I’m still not sure if the girl’s generation cd is really a DVD or not. I bought b2st for myself (^.^). But the price was ridiculously cheap! I got all 4 cds—or maybe 3 cds and 1 DVD—for the equivalent of about 20 or 30 dollars. Super junior’s cd, the cheapest cd out of all of them, was about 36 Yuan! That is around 6 dollars plus some change, my only regret is that I didn’t get big bang. I honestly can’t find big bang anywhere here, I mean maybe I haven’t looked hard enough but I really would like to get big bang before I leave.

After that I had my first subway/public bus experience in china. All I can say was it was CRAMPED! But it was still so cool. The subway had TVs on the wall and screens outside of the glass doors. I’m not sure how that worked. But it was all pretty sick. But as soon as I got to the bed I crashed again. The funny thing was I kept lying to myself saying I was going to get up! (lawlz XD) well I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be doing today now that the schedule been changed. But I hope it will be as fun as shopping was yesterday.
------------hours later-----------
Ok well today wasn’t as fun yesterday in my opinion. It started off with us visiting summer palace while it was pouring rain. We ended up getting lost, four of us, but we found the group eventually. After that we went to a REALLY COOL rotating restaurant in this really tall hotel. It for some reason was swarming with dragonflies. The uniforms all of the waiters and waitresses had were soo cute. They were dressed in purple uniforms Chinese style, with golden embroidery. This restaurant was Awesome! It was buffet-style and they had green tea ice cream!
We took rides on rickshaws for 35 Yuan (5 dollars) it was really cool because we got to see the part of Beijing that felt raw. The homes were small, the families were large. There you could see people just doing their everyday routines of buying fruit or playing mahjong (or shougi). After that we went into this guy’s house that had his entire place filled with gifts from all over the world. He had pictures coins cash trinkets, art, everything from the hundreds of people who he allowed into his house.
After that we were allowed free time to just chill in hou hai. I liked hou hai a lot, especially at night, because it looked like a festival. It had the river in the center and the bridge to cross it and tons of people sitting outside in bars, singing karaoke or drinking. There were tons of foreigners and Chinese alike just roaming the place. I ended up buying a pair of Chinese shoes for about 200 Yuan and a Chinese shot glass for about 35 Yuan. Although I probably could’ve hustled for less on the glass--- had I known beforehand that I could. I was actually able to lie my way into getting the cheaper shoes because I told the girl my mom died (ha-ha) after that I was able to get a mahjong set, originally 200 Yuan, down to 50 Yuan by lying again and saying I only had 100 Yuan to spend, I was even able to get free English instructions on how to play, it was a pretty sweet deal.
After that I ended up taking a taxi back with john, nick, and Angela. It was my first cab experience. Dr. To assign a Chinese student to each car for fear the cab drivers would try to overcharge us. When we arrived, Angela, nick and I decided to just chill out with each other and talk. We talked about Beijing and what we thought of it, music, school, friends, and other stuff.

In the end my stereotypes, and preconception of Beijing changed a little bit. For example, did Chinese people really eat dogs, are they god drivers, how tall are they, do they speak English, are they really thin?

Basically the people are the same here as if the States and by that I mean, that they all vary in height, weight, and English speaking skills. one thing i thought i would see a lot but really didn't was long haired people. I didn't see many long-haired people at all. Maybe it could've been because it was summer when we went, but many girls had really short hair, almost NO guys had long hair...I mean maybe I've watched 1 too many kung fu movies but I always thought that many Chinese did have the Bruce lee bowl cut or the Chow Yun Fat braid cascading down their back----but no....i didn't see any of that anywhere in Beijing. In fact, I didn't even see anybody with dyed hair! That sort of surprised me especially because all the Japanese students dye their hair in BSU.

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