Markets and Museums

Photos

Not the most exciting week, but I continued my search for the Holy Grail in China: shoes and clothes that fit me. We found where there are two markets referred to as the "Russian Markets" which boded as a good sign I'm told, as the Russians are hard bargainers and need real sizes. So I went with friends and hunted out the "Alien Market" and "MEN Market" and did some damage! The markets were quite good actually, a bit touristy in a slightly different way and it was a little bizarre to have the shop keepers calling out to us in Russian! Not understanding them, we just smiled and looked around but clearly they didn't believe that we weren't Russian because Tash heard one shop keeper say something along the lines of "They understand, they are just ignoring us". She turned around and said "Ying wan" (English) to them, to which they suddenly were all smiles and gestured us into their shop with the customary "Come looky, looky!"

The shoes were very cool but still too small, clothes ranged from kinda cool to downright garish, but we did get lots of great tea and misc tea accessories. I will definitely go back I think, as they had household stuff which seemed quite cheap. My list of items for the house is still quite long I'm just on the hunt for the best bargin now. Shopping on, we went to Yue Shou Clothing Market nearby and stocked up on clothes (Tash and Andrea, not me. Ok, I got one top, but it's very cool!) then finally to the Ya Shou Market where we continued the shoe and bag hunt with slightly more success. Not for shoes, but I found a very cool bag for a great price in the ultimate non-haggling experience I've had so far.

I looked at a small brown leather bag and asked if it was real leather. The guy said, "Of course!" and held a lighter flame to the bag, which I hate them doing. I know it won't set on fire but really, the bottom floor in the back corner of a bustling market is not the place you want to risk such a disaster because I KNOW I wouldn't make it out alive! I said, sorry but nevermind I can't afford a leather bag (which is what all the other shopkeepers told me when I told them what I wanted to pay) but he said how much? I told him I only have Y50 to spend (and it has a pricetag of nearly Y600) so I want something that's not leather, but he of course said "400!". I thanked him and walked on to which he called to me "200!". I laughed, explained I wasn't haggling, I really only had Y50 for a bag, to which he said "100!". Again, I smiled, and kept walking (really, I wasn't haggling, I knew he wouldn't drop that far), and he caved, amazingly enough. Goes to show what kind of mark-up they put on in some places! So I unexpectedly have great little brown leather bag, which he told me conversationally that he does quite easily sell for Y200. Silly them, I said.

On Sunday I went to the Capital Museum which is quite an impressive building, all modern and slanty. I had a "proof I am actually here" photo taken of me in front of the big slanty thing that was so intriging. First we went to see the "Treasures of the Louvre: Greek Art" exhibit as it was it's opening day. It was quite good actually, but a lot of the items on display were reproductions which was a little disapointing. Among the real stuff though, there were some beauties, but I found the most intruguing thing to be the Chinese habit of lining up (pushing aside, more like actually) to get to a piece, not to see it but just to take a photo of it! I don't think many people there actually really LOOKED at any of the items, they just took photos. To be able to show people what they didn't really look at, I suppose...

The permanent exhibitions were quite good, I liked the History of Chinese civilisations exhibit with artefacts from different dynasties and a cool multimedia piece where the set was of the roof of a fortress and you looked over a "wall" and watching a projection on the wall of the mongul hoards attacking over the plains. Awesome! I really liked the timeline they had around the circumfrence of the exhibition space. It started with the dawn of man (which was in China of course!) and traced historical events all the way to the present. It really made the point about how ancient the Chinese civilisation is, with dynasties rising and falling while people in the rest of the world were still basically rubbing sticks together. By the time you got to the European historical events, well, dynasties were still rising and falling but they had been doing so for 2000 years.

The slanty thing is also an exhibition space as well as the most eye catching thing in the museum, as you walk the the foyer you just want to step back to take it all in. The exhibits in the slanty bit were cool, one level for various forms of Chinese art like calligraphy and painting, but I loved the jade exhibition. Some beautiful, delicate pieces absolutely to die for. Walking down through the section was quite unnerving because the ramp spiraled down following the outer wall and it felt like you were intoxicated because you couldn't walk straight. We were all quite dizzy by the time we got to the bottom.

Finally, Sunday night I met a girl whose contact details I was given by someone who previously lived in Beijing. She was so lovely, and took me out to eat Yunnan food in a new part of town for me so I discovered a new cuisine, a new area and a new friend. It did unfortunately storm like Thor has a bee in his helmet, very unexpectedly, and we had to abandon our meal halfway through to run into the restaurant. I was very upset I was about that, and is testament to how bad the storm was for ME to leave food on the table! We did have dessert though, so all was not lost...