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Walking on NanJing East road was pretty interesting this evening.  I guess I haven’t strolled down what they call the “Walking Street” for a long time, especially without someone like JJ to keep the sellers away from me (or as much as she can keep them away from me).  But walking alone down this street was quite different than I remember it.  For one, I felt much like I did at Qi Pu road, which I described in a recent post, about how the aggressiveness of sellers on the street has risen since I’ve been here last.  There are definitely a lot more hawkers and the state of how far they will go and how obvious they are has increased.

Immediately when I walked out of the underpass from the opposite side of People’s Square, I was bombarded with some very random questions from random people.  Some of the best ones were:

Getting handed a few lewd cards with photographs of scantily dressed women and text saying 80 RMB / hour for massage.  Clearly this was not for just your run-of-the-mill massage, wink wink.  Being the person that just came from Vegas a few months ago, I thought this was pretty hilarious because the cards look just like the ones handed out by the Mexicans in droves on the strip in Las Vegas.  On a serious note though, I can’t ever recall seeing such open prostitution anywhere in Shanghai, much less an entire business around printing these ludicrous cards.  I can’t imagine there is a large demand for tourists, who have usually traveled halfway across the world to visit this place, picking up a prostitute from some weirdo who is handing out sexually explicit cards advertising that special kind of massage.  So strange.

Right in the middle of the street, several women came up to me and asked me directly if I wanted a massage, clearly soliciting sex.  It’s just so strange to see this in Shanghai, considering I keep hearing all kinds of things about how the local government is trying to clean things up for the 2010 Expo (like cracking down on all of those Red Light barbershops I’ve spoken of before).

A young fellow asked me the generic “Do I want bag, watch, dvd, phone, apple iphone, sunglass (not sunglasses)…….”.  I said no once and barely acknowledged this guy after that as I continued walking towards the coffee shop, where I am currently writing this Blog post.  Instead of eventually giving up though, this guy was determined.  He continued to walk with me.  I mean, it would be one thing if I kept giving him the ‘No, no, I dont think so, I’m not that interested. Sorry, no thanks.  Sorry.’  That at least would have been an acknowledgement that I was listening to the guy.  I was listening to the guy but I was also doing my best to get rid of him and considering I was walking at a pretty brisk pace, he just would not go away.  I am not exaggerating when I say that I walked a good two long blocks before this guy gave up.  It was so long in fact that I started to think he had some kind of ulterior motive, like a posse that was pick-pocketing me in the process.  (Of course that was just my paranoia taking over).

Of course, what would a “Walking Street” story be without bringing up my favorite question of them all.  The sellers who are hawking the roller skate attachments for your shoes.  You’ve seen those kiddy shoes that have the embedded wheel on the sole, so kids can slide around as they walk.  They don’t seem as popular in the US now but like 5-10 years ago, they were big.  Well there are sellers on this street trying to sell you this device that is essentially the same thing as those kiddy shoes, except instead of being embedded into the sole, they are just an attachment that fits on the outside and supposedly can be used on any normal tennis shoe.  I guess in theory, this product is not totally ludicrous, but these things are for little kids.  These things are not only for kids, but they are for little kids.  I remember when I was starting high school and these things were kind of popular and by that time, I was much much too old to be even find these things in my size in a shoe store, much less be popular wearing them around school (Not that being popular was ever one of my concerns).  If you watch these sellers though, they are literally trying to sell these things to adults, as if any adult in their right mind would buy a pair.  So I am walking down this street, in my size 13 1/2 shoes, and I get asked repeatedly if I want to get a set of these things.  “Wait, you have my size?” I always sarcastically ask.  “Yes” is always the answer.  So I think at some point I need to actually get a pair of these things, if just to complement these sellers for making it so easy to buy these stupid wheel attachment things and so friggin complicated to buy a pair of shoes in my size.  Bizarro world.