Mall Rats and Spyders

When we moved here we had no friends and couldn't speak Chinese. But we soon found a place where we were always welcome... the Shanghai Science & Tech underground market where everybody was our best friend and at least our Chinese was better than their English! I wish I could describe the place. It is in fact entirely underground and the place just doesn't end. There have to be at least 1,000 small shops all pushing their merchandise. It's definitely a must-see place in Shanghai.

We went there several times in the first couple of weeks because it was entertaining to see how the bargaining process worked and it was a good chance to practice our Chinese with the sellers. We really had no interest in buying things, but stopped into the shops and chatted.

They always are trying to sell you something... Rolex watch, Louis Vuitton bag, DVDs, iPods... you name it, it can be found here. We had no interest in buying anything since we had just moved there and were still trying to get our bearing of where we were and what we needed. But they would push items on us and as we insisted that we didn't want things, they continued to drop prices. The result is that we we got to see how low they would go on items so that when it was time to buy, we had a "local" perspective on prices.

Eventually our Chinese graduated out of the underground market scene and we gave up the Mall Rat life, but when we need something, we usually go back there.

Fast forward to last Saturday and Christmas shopping. It's a year and half later, and we still can't speak Chinese and we still don't have any friends, but we do have the Science & Tech Market! We were there until the place closed at 8:30 pm and it was pretty slow. I had Adayla and Ryann while Morgan had Tally so that we could shop for each other. I was done and was waiting for Morgan and Tally to finish up. Several of the shop ladies came out into one of the halls to see the girls and Adayla immediately started chatting with them in Chinese. Needless to say this drew a crowd and eventually about 20 ladies came around to watch the foreign girl speaking Chinese.

Adayla said some funny things. At first one of the ladies asked Adayla if she would come home with her for the evening. Adayla declined. She then asked if she could take Ryann home for the evening and Adayla responded, "Ni bu keyi yinwei ni bu keyi gei Ryann he nai" which started an eruption of laughter. Adayla told the lady that she couldn't take Ryann home because she didn't have any milk to feed Ryann with! She kept the ladies entertained for a half hour or so, entirely in Chinese. One gal actually asked me if my wife was Chinese because Adayla's Chinese is so good... does Adayla look half-Chinese? Eventually Morgan came with Tally and the the ladies all complemented Morgan for raising three daughters.

Morgan and I went back to the Science & Tech Market today without the girls to finish our Christmas shopping and we walked past a shop selling ski jackets. We weren't looking for a ski jacket, but the two gals were nice enough and we chatted for a bit. I noticed a cute little pink ski jacket that we thought would be fun for Tally. When they pulled it out for us to get a better look at, the brand name "SPYDER" jumped out at us. How perfect... Tally's favorite toy right now is a black plastic spider that she still has from Halloween. They started us at RMB 680, or about $100, but we eventually got them down to RMB 110, or about $16. Morgan and I really wanted to get it down to RMB 80 or so, so we took their card and continued our shopping. As we came upon other shops with the same jacket we bargained with them on the jacket. The result? One shop only came down to 200, two shops came down to 150, two shops came down to 120, and several shops also came down to RMB 110. So being faithful to the first shop, we went back at the end of the day to buy the jacket from them.

They asked us if we were going "home" for Christmas and we told them that we were "home" and didn't need to go anywhere to be "home." We told them that our youngest was born here in Shanghai and that the girls speak Chinese. They then both looked at us and asked if we had been there on Saturday evening. We said yes and asked them if they were in the "crowd" that evening. They weren't there, but they had heard other people talking about the foreign-family with the three Chinese-speaking girls. Funny how news travels around.