We made a visit to the fake market the other night, after I stopped working.  JJ’s dad had to buy some shorts and I wanted to buy some t-shirts.  I had made the mistake of bringing like 3 t-shirts to China for a month-plus trip across the world.  Not the greatest idea considering it takes more than a day to wash a piece of clothes by the time I feed it through the miniature-size washing machine and then hang dry them in the bedroom in our cramped apartment.

The fake market was quite interesting though because this place was drastically different from the other fake market in the more populated Shanghai Science & Technology Museum area.  That place is designed for tourists and foreigners.  It is literally a step away from the underground subway stop and almost everyone working has a relatively decent grasp of English.  Plus, if you look around, half the shoppers or more are not Chinese; a pretty weird scene considering most places in Shanghai never have that kind of odd ratio.  The place we went to, known as Qi Pu Road, is like the fake market for Chinese people.  We did see an occasional foreigner here and there but for the most part, it’s all Chinese people looking for a good bargain.

Unlike the last times I’ve visited this place though, Qi Pu Road seemed to have gotten more crazy and more in your face.  Upon getting out of the taxi, we were immediately bombarded by a very small boy, in raggedy pants and a cheap plastic cup, shoving it in our faces as we stepped out of the taxi.  JJ’s father dropped 1 Yuan into his cup and he promptly moved on to his next victim.

On a side note, I find it hilarious that JJ’s father is the complete opposite of me in regards to giving money to beggars.  He tends to give money to the beggars who seem the most helpless, the most disfigured, the most sad.  We saw a person with literally only their upper body, no arms, no hands, no legs, laying on a piece of dirty cardboard, just beside a crosswalk.  JJ’s father automatically dropped 1 Yuan into her cup.  I, on the other hand, am way more picky and selfish about who I give money to on the street.  If the person is doing absolutely nothing and just begging, I would never give money to that person.  I absolutely can’t stand when mothers have a child in their arms and expect me to drop a coin in their cup just because they can use their small child to garner sorrow.  I do however like to give a coin or two to people on the street who are actually doing something, performing, drawing, performing some service.  Usually if I see anyone playing music, I give them money.

When the taxi drove away, we immediately were approached by several people who were asking us what we wanted.  It must have been funny for JJ’s parents because if they were alone, they definitely would not have received all the attention that we were getting because of my “rich” foreign face.  (Little did they know I was the massively cheap person that I am, in addition to mostly being there because JJ’s dad wanted to buy some shorts).

I noticed a few things right away while we strolled into the big mall and up the stairs as we followed our eventual ‘agent’ who was to help us find what we were looking for (how me makes any money is still a mystery to me).  First, a very large amount of people had tattoos.  Tattoos are not very common in China.  Every once in a while, I will see one, usually on a girl, like in the US.  But very rarely.  Inside this clothing market, I swear, 10-20% of the people I saw had some tattoo somewhere on their body.  Totally unheard of in China.  Second thing that was curious was that most of the guys were totally ripped.  Normally, its not that common to see a Chinese guy who is visibly buff, someone who lifts weights on a day to day basis.  Here however, almost every young guy salesman was visibly buff.  Very odd.  I guess they have so much free time that they use it to work out.

The funniest moment came at the end of our visit.  JJ’s father had already purchased his shorts and I was still looking for a few t-shirts.  We had just been to more than 4 stores, each store going through the same exact process.  First, we would find a shirt on the rack that looked appealing.  We would ask the seller for their biggest size, preferably XXL or XXXL.  They would then come back with an XL and either say that it was plenty big enough, that it would never shrink (which is just a complete lie) or that it would stretch after I wore it.  I would then try it on, after insisting that it was visibly too small.  It would be too small once I put it on (what a surprise), and we would move on to another store.  This store however had a hilarious seller.  Upon inspection of the shirt, we asked to try it on.  She surprisingly said “No”.  We had to go through the bargaining process and settle on a price before I was able to try it on.  We could not even try it on!!!  That was totally ridiculous to me and after a back and forth dispute about how ridiculous that truly was, we motioned to leave.  Immediately after we motioned to leave, she said “ok ok” and let me try on the clothes.  I just could not keep from thinking about if that strategy has ever in her life as a saleswoman worked on a customer, especially a Chinese customer.  To buy something in a conspicuous store, not even try it on, spend minutes of back and forth yelling about the price and do all of this before you even know if the piece of clothing will fit or not?  Utterly insane.

Now though, I have some awesome Shanghai t-shirts