The Thing About Assumptions...

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Hey everybody!

This past Thursday marked the beginning of China's National Holiday, meaning that we had both Thursday and Friday off, and will have no classes for the entirety of the coming week. In celebration, I went out dancing with some friends. At the club, there was a specific black guy who was pinning for one of the girls for most of the night. Until about 2:30, we managed to keep her back to the stage/area where the bouncer was while we were dancing so that he couldn't make a move. However, eventually he snuck up on us and got up behind her. She was too nice to tell him to back off, so she ended up dancing with him for a while. Poor choice, because after that he wouldn't go away. When we went to the bar for her to get a drink, he followed us and brought us over to his group of friends. They were all much older than us, probably in their 30s, and my friend was definitely not interested. However, when we wanted to go back to the dance floor he wouldn't let us go by ourselves, and followed us back. We managed to get on the stage thing to dance for a while, but he lingered around the base. My friend started dancing (not the grinding kind) with another guy while we were up there, and I could see the black guy getting really jealous. Eventually he managed to get up on the stage with us, and he started dancing in such a way that he "accidentally" pushed the other guy off, which was totally rude and not cool. After a bit he went elsewhere, but he left a friend up on the stage with us to play watchdog, which was weird, especially since my friend was definitely not interested in him. The friend was a lot nicer, though, and actually danced with us and the guy who had been pushed off earlier. Not long after, we decided to find our friends and call it a night. We went back out to the main area of the club, and found our friends and were ready to go. However, one of the guys wanted to stop and say goodbye to someone he had met, and while he was trying to talk to the guy the black guy and his group of friends found us. The one guy started trying to get my friend's Wechat, while another of his friends (who was like 40 or 50, I swear) tried to hit on me. It was really weird. When I told him I am from America, he asked me which province. Eventually I ended up just grabbing our guy friend and trying to pull him away from the cute Italian girl he was flirting it up with so that he would hurry it up. It took him a bit to wrap it up, but once he was finally ready to go, I grabbed my friend and pulled her away from the creepy possessive guy. As I was walking away I told the old guy that we had to go and pointed to our guy friend waiting for us. He asked if the guy was my boyfriend and I simply said "yes" and dragged my friend out of there. (She told me later that he tried to pull her back as I was pulling her away, but she was thankful that I got her out of that situation.) Honestly, if it weren't for the creepy black guy we probably would have stayed longer because we were having such a great time, but as it was we wanted to get away from that. I've noticed that the Chinese guys here are thirsty, but at least they respect personal boundaries. The African guys here are giving their race such a bad name because not only are they also thirsty, but they have no sense of respect, either. Not interested.

On Friday, Ian and I planned to hit 秀水市場 up again for winter jackets. Yinka and Chris told us they also wanted to go, and Yinka suggested that we try Zoo market as well, as they tend to have fewer tourists and supposedly had better prices. The morning of, both Yinka and Chris backed out, but two other guys in our group agreed to join us. First of all, I hadn't realized that the Zoo market is actually made up of three different buildings. The first one we went into was five floors of women's clothing, which was both impressive and excessive. The second building we went into was eight floors, of which there was one floor of guys stuff, four of shoes, and the rest were women's clothing. Since I was the only girl in the group and I often shop in the guys section anyways (and I was looking for a jacket, so I was totally fine getting that from the guy's section), we ended up on the floor of men's clothing. It was a very large floor, and in the five hours that we spent at the market, we probably spent about four of them just walking around that floor. I didn't end up with an actual winter jacket as I had planned (the snow jackets were very expensive and the women's pea coats were either too expensive or the fuzzy kind - and if you buy a pea coat, it has to be a woman's cut), but I did find a nice decently heavy faux leather coat that I really liked. The first store that I tried it on in was run by a woman, who turned out to be scarily ferocious. I asked Jude to help me bargain for it, because he is good at bargaining, but this woman was having none of that. When he tried to start at a lower price than what she was offering (she asked for something like 300元, and Jude tried 100元), she got really intense really fast. She kept saying that it was real leather and a nice jacket and all this stuff, and when Jude didn't back down, she turned on me and started yelling at me. She kept saying things along the lines of "he doesn't understand what I'm saying; why aren't you saying anything; stop listening to him," and other things. I understood that much but not everything that she was saying, and there was a reason I had Jude helping me bargain. Ian and Will walked away completely, they were so freaked out by her yelling. Eventually Jude and I walked away, and she followed us out of the shop still yelling at me. It was actually pretty scary. It was also a nice example of the judgement that I was afraid of before coming here, where the shopkeeper definitely assumed I was stupid for not understanding what she was saying and getting really angry with me for it. Another shopkeeper during that trip actually asked me if I could speak Chinese (taking a hint from the fact that all of my friends were obviously 外國人, foreigners), but this woman just kept yelling and yelling, as if that would get me to want to speak with her or do anything other than want to leave. It was uncomfortable and intimidating for all of us, and afterwards none of us had any interest in going past her shop again. I did end up buying the coat from a different shop - they all had a lot of overlap in their wares - and from a guy who was much nicer and more willing to bargain with us.

We never did make it to 秀水市場 once we were finished shopping, simply due to the sheer size of the zoo market. However, the zoo market was more what I had been picturing when we first went to 秀水市場, as it was more crowded, dirtier, and the starting prices were much cheaper. I have come to the conclusion, though, that because 秀水市場 gets more foreigners who don't know to bargain there, or are very bad at bargaining, they tend to be much nicer and open to the idea of bargaining. The salespeople there know that their prices are ridiculous and are therefore more willing to barter for things. However at zoo market, the shopkeepers start their pricing much lower and are therefore much more reluctant to barter. They're also more rude, but that could just be a culture thing, because I did notice that there were very few (if any) other foreigners in that market. We travel to 青海 Qinghai for the week (since we have it off), which is why I was trying to buy a jacket in the first place. Sometime after we get back I will probably go back to 秀水市場 and try to buy an actual coat there for the coming winter, but until then I will be happy with my leather jacket.

Hope you all are well, and I will talk to you soon! Until next time!

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Photos

Model of Dashilar Area
This is the area we were primarily in for the Beijing Design week field trip last Sunday

Model Houses
Jude looking at some wire outlines for house remodeling plans in Dashilar

Fighting crickets
Do you see how big these are?!?! What the heck??