May 14: Shopping

Our second day, May 14, was a “free day.” We went to the “walking street”
or Wang Fu Jing. In order to get there, we had to cross the street. TWICE.
No small task. Anyone who has been to Beijing already knows this, but for
those of you who don’t,…understand that CROSSING THE STREET in Beijing
translates to "I HAVE A DEATH WISH…THE SOONER THE BETTER, PLEASE.”
Seriously, it’s scary. Cars, vans, and yes, BUSES, have the right away.
Always. Even when the pedestrian light is green. Your only hope is to find
a crowd of Chinese, try to get as close to them as possible, close your
eyes, and GO. We almost lost dh to a moped and Lizzi to a bus. The
people on the bus laughed at her. I didn’t think it was all that funny. I
told everyone we no longer cross the street without a ton of Chinese
people nearby.

So we survived. We first went to the mall where we were surprised by a few
things. First, the ratio of clerks to shoppers was often 1:1 or 2:1.
Clerks everywhere. Not that many shoppers. But with the prices, we weren’t
surprised. Stuff wasn’t cheap. It was really no different than being in
any N. American mall. Cleaner, maybe. I never did see a trash can in the
mall, so I wasn’t sure how it managed to stay so clean…except perhaps that
high worker to shopper ratio. The only thing we found to be cheap was
Cds/DVDs. The kids each bought a few. Lizzi got one for $2 that we
estimated to cost around $30 at home. I bought a couple kids’ Cds. I tried
to find some that were in Chinese and suitable for 3-year-olds, but the
clerks didn’t think they had anything that met the criteria. We looked at
the DVDs for a long time, but weren’t sure they’d work at home. They were
also inexpensive.

We walked through a lot of shops. And then cruised a side street where you
could buy scorpions on a stick. Yum. Apparently, it’s important to have them fresh, so they are
strung on the stick alive and then deep fried on the spot. We also saw
some sort of insect as well as sea horses for eating off a stick. As we
weren’t really all that hungry, we left.

We made a stop at a grocery store for bottled water to take back to our
room. And treated each kid to their own bottle of pop. Oh, incidentally,
we weren’t hungry mostly because the breakfast buffet in our hotel (Novotel Peace) is amazing. Oh, the FOOD. Some Chinese, some traditional breakfast stuff. Pot
stickers, fried noodles, fish, eggs cooked 3 or 4 different ways,
pancakes, waffles, miso soup, congee, pastries, yogurt drinks, 4 kinds of
juice, several kinds of fruit…and much, much more. It’s fantastic. We see
a lot of international travelers in our hotel. I guess the owners are
French; Air France uses the hotel as a travel base. But lots of other
international travelers as well.

But back to shopping… Although a few people approached us to buy things,
it was less than we expected. And we started to wonder about something. We
caught a lot of people staring at LilDude. Often staring from me to
LilDude and back. We think people were very confused by seeing an Asian
child with an Anglo family. Finally, one salesgirl directly asked, “Is he
Chinese?” And even after we said he was born in Korea she still wanted to
know if he spoke Chinese. She said he looked very Chinese. I think LilDude
confused people and made them a little unsure of where we were from and
therefore weren't as likely to give us high pressure sales pitches. I told
LilDude he was lucky. He could pretend to be Chinese or Korean or American.
As long as he didn’t speak, that is. He thought this was quite humorous.
Everywhere we go, we continue to get stares that seem to focus on how this
little “Chinese” boy could be with us. Some people assume that because of
his presence, we speak Chinese.

After shopping, we returned to the hotel to take a nap. Then a Thai meal
at the mall where all of us ate well for only about $20. The same meal at
home would have cost double. After dinner we caught a cab for what was
supposed to be a 20 minute ride to the Acrobat show at the Choayang
theater. But the 20 minute cab ride easily turned into a 40 minute ride.
Traffic here is incredible. Cars everywhere. Long lights. Bicycles,
pedestrians, cars, buses, everyone merging at once, all the time. We
entered the theatre with about a minute to go before the show. It was
amazing.

The show was indescribable. Everything from people bending in ways that
look absolutely painful, to jumping through rings in crazy ways, to
loading one bicycle with about 12 people, to incredible balance tricks.

Very cool. But we were also feeling the effects of jet lag. I LOVED the
show, but caught my head bobbing once just because I was so tired. LilDude fell asleep on the way back. We all went straight to bed and slept well.
Great day.