Needless to say: shopping

So I'm officially booked to come back to Canada early. I'll be home by April 15th! It was a big decision, but I think it's the right one.

Over the past couple weeks I've been busy with school, shopping and other work. Not too much exciting really, but I've gathered some pictures of scenery and of the results of my shopping sprees.

This one is from a bizarre underground supermarket in Sanlitun. It was totally deserted and everything in it seemed to be incredibly old and dusty. They had bulk containers of foreign spices like oregano...but it seemed that those bulk containers had never sold, so they had repackaged some of them into little individual baggies which also didn't look like they would ever sell.

Mmmm, tuna liquor.

One weekend we went to Hongqiao market and to a silk factory nearby in order to research qipao fabrics. The factory was a total tourist trap, but was ok to walk through. Here I am on the overpass by Hongqiao.

Here are some pictures of silkworm cocoons in a machine used for processing them...this was there only to show tour groups how the machine worked. They would turn it on for a minute to demonstrate and then move on to something else.

Silk strands being pulled into spools on the top.

Various looms:

Outside Hongqiao we saw this oddly name coffee house whose logo also looks very much like that of another multinational coffee company.

I picked up a leather purse for myself:

And some red beads for the wedding...

I got a red table runner for Carol (if any other friends or relatives reading this have any particular requests for things from Beijing, let me know ASAP).

I bought myself a cashmere scarf:

A red shawl for the wedding:

And a couple other colours:

After much research and price-checking, Zoe and I finally decided to return to the very first qipao place we ever looked at. It's not far from our school and is easily accessible either by bus or even on foot. First, we stopped for Across-the-bridge-noodles in an upstairs restaurant. While we ate I took a picture of the view, fake green hedge and all:

Then we went to the qipao store and spent a long time choosing fabrics from the various swatches. I really didn't want anything too over-the-top, so I finally decided on the fabric below, which is real silk and which has a pattern of dragons and phoenixes on it (representing male and female, so perfect for a wedding). The dress will be be edged with gold which should be flashy enough for me, but not too much. It's kind of hard to capture what it looks like with a picture...and it's hard to imagine from just a swatch, but I think it will be very nice and elegant. I'm nervous, but also excited to see the result.

After looking through all the swatches I decided what the hell, I may as well order two dresses. When else will I get the chance to have a tailored qipao? So I picked out this nice green fabric, which is a lower quality fabric than the red swatch, but is still fine. In person the peony flowers are not quite so prominent. There is also a pattern of phoenixes on this fabric.

We get to go and try on the dresses in early April. I'm really looking forward to it!

Hello, this is Marie here. I changed the comment options on here, so it's now possibly to write something even if you don't have any kind of blog account. Just select 'Anonymous' and go ahead and write your comment. Let me know if you have any troubles!

Nothing much exciting has happened over the past week. I've been going to a coffee shop nearby which has a really nice atmosphere, free wireless internet, and good coffee and other drinks. For some reason going there really improved my mood and made me feel better about being here.

The weather has cooled down considerably. I've pulled out my winter stuff (gloves, hat, scarves) and used it all for the first time this week.

School is still rather busy for me and I have to prepare a presentation for my newspaper reading class. I really hate that class as I am the only westerner and therefore about the slowest at reading characters among all my classmates. It is really challenging....so challenging that it is actually a bit discouraging. The other classes I'm taking all feel like they are the right level for me, but in this one I just constantly feel like the slow kid in class. We have to do two assignments each week in which we write very short essays. For one, we have to pick a newspaper article, write out all the unfamiliar vocabulary in the article (for me that's just about every word), write an article summary and then write out our opinion on the article. Finally, we have to think up two questions for the class. I am so slow at writing that it's a bit of a nightmare for me. Anyway, that's what I'll be working on for the rest of the weekend.

Here's a picture of a lunch Zoe and I shared earlier this week. One is a bamboo shoot dish, another is bok choy and mushrooms and the last one is eggplant, potatoes, green peppers and meat. It was delicious and it cost us about $4 canadian each.

Now for what I did Friday night: Zoe and I went to a shopping area in Wudaokou (the area where her old university is located). I spent way too much, but I had fun doing so. I got some new shirts, a pencil case, DVDs and other things. I also noticed a ton of yarn stores there, so at some point I'll probably go back to pick some up.

After all the shopping (plus Zoe got a haircut), we went for dinner at a really delicious Korean place. Zoe had been there in the past with her boyfriend and really enjoyed it. It was the perfect thing for a cold evening. We ordered a hotpot and a korean pancake.

Here I am with the hotpot just as it was starting to cook (the korean hotpot comes with everything already in it.

Here's the view of it all from above:

The delicious Korean pancake:

A nice picture of Zoe and an awful picture of me. Photo smile + awkward hunched posture = looking much larger than usual.

Here's the hotpot once it was all cooked and ready to eat. So delicious!

After eating, Zoe took me to the area "where the locals hang out." On the way we saw huge bundles of stuff for recycling. Zoe said people bring stuff they have collected (such as bottles, styrofoam, etc.) and drop it off here. They get paid based on the weight.

At one point in the evening we saw an old lady with a gigantic, heavy-looking pile of recyclables. It was sad seeing such an old woman having to do that kind of work. She was pedaling so slowly and really seemed to be struggling. It looked like so much work for probably a very small amount of money.

The area where the locals hang out was really interesting...based on some of the stares I got, it was obvious that not too many foreigners go there. I took a few pictures to give you an idea of what it looked like. Here's a street of shops selling everything from food (butchershops, groceries, restaurants) to clothing: