Shopping Beijing
Trip Start
Jun 06, 2009
1
14
33
Trip End
May 04, 2010
Beijing, China
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The last couple days were more of my shopping days. I hadn’t bought anything the entire time while I was in China so I decided that the last days were going be the days where I check out what Beijing has to offer shopping wise. I started off the day by first going sightseeing at the Temple of Heaven. Which was great, it was a Tibetan style temple and was in a huge park and I had a good time walking around the place. It is a very famous temple, I was in one of the museums on site and they had all these pictures of famous politicians, diplomats, and other well-known people standing outside of it. It was beautiful, like every other temple.
Across the street from the Temple of Heaven was also the famous Pearl Market that I had heard about before I left. So of course I went since I was given a mission from my mom to buy as many cheap pearls as possible. They had tons of pearls, it was like a jewelry makers heaven. They not only had pearls, but other stones and it was all priced very well, well after you talked them down from their original price.
The first two floors was mostly shoes and fake designer bags, but the rest of the building until the 6th floor was all pearls and other stones. I had a good time looking at everything that was offered, besides it was annoying to always hear "Lady, pretty lady, come look what do you want? What are you looking for?" It was that over and over again from everyone. It was worse on the first two floors though. They don’t ask they just grab you and drag you to their things and start showing you things. Oh and if you show interest in something they will hold onto your arm with a Hulk grip until they can reach a deal with you. I bought a really good fake Chanel bag that way, I really like the bag, but I wasn’t going to buy it because there is a specific Chanel bag that I want, and it wasn’t it. I bought the purse though, and I don’t regret it because I like it, but I don’t have the Chanel bag that I wanted.
The second day I went to the Silk Road Market, which was basically the same idea besides they had clothes and souvenirs as well. They only had one floor of jewelry. They were less hostile, unlike the sales girls the day before, but they still shout at you. It was kinda like shopping in Tijuana but instead of “princess”, which I get in TJ it was “lady”. At the end of the day I ended up buying mostly jewelry and bags. My favorite souvenir is always a traditional painting by a local artist, so I found a reasonably priced one and bought it. Besides the paintings, no other souvenir type things. I already have tons of Chinese type of thing from Linda and Anthony and most of it was Buddhist and I still have until next summer in a Buddhist country so I’m not jumping on that stuff.
I am going to eave for the airport to go to Thailand in about 2 hours, I absolutely cannot wait, but before I do that I will say what I did today. I got up early this morning with Baolin to go to his harmonica group, this time in Beihai Park. I had not been to that park so while he was playing with his friends I walked around the park. First I looked at the old buildings and the history part of the park. Though afterwards I decided to walk around and people watch, much more interesting than people watching at home. So I decided to just walk the circle of the park. They were tons of groups like the harmonica group, however they were not playing the harmonica. There were groups ballroom dancing, fan dancing, playing hack-e-sack with weighted feathers, ribbon dancers, that game where you have the poles, string and those hour-glass looking things spin on the string, okay terrible description. It was great though, all these retired old Chinese people just in the park in the morning having fun. They weren’t performing, because they were not asking for money, they just all got together to do something that they had fun doing.
Afterwards we went out for a goodbye lunch. We had Beijing Duck, which was also the first thing I ate when I got here so I felt it was to go out the same way that I came in. Since then I have just been getting ready for my flight and cleaning up.
Talk to you all again in Thailand!
