CHINA: Day 6

Tuesday May 22, 2012

We started this morning with the Pearl Market.  The Pearl Market is a giant building with zillions of little stands with vendors selling zillions of things.  The first three floors have things like clothes, scarves, sunglasses, phone covers, headphones, watches, jewelry, bags, shoes, perfume, table cloths, ipads, cameras, and really anything else you can think of.  It’s called the Pearl Market because on the top floor there are lots of jewelry stores who specialize in real pearls. 

When Joe and Sharlet lived here, they made friends with one of the ladies who owned one of these stores name Ru Pei Pei.  In China you can get everything for cheaper, including real pearls.  So, of course, Joe took us up to meet Pei Pei.  Her little store was incredible.  It’s just like a Zales back home only it’s full of pearls rather than diamonds.  I am kind of a sucker for pearls.  They had tons of jewelry ready to buy, or you could pick your own color, shape, and size of pearls and have them custom make jewelry for you.  The girls definitely had a good time in there.  My pearls are hands-down my favorite thing that I have bought.  They are gorgeous!

After Ru Pei Pei, we went downstairs to explore the rest of the Pearl Market.  That place is nuts.  The vendors are super aggressive and everyone is yelling and grabbing at you trying to get you to come buy their stuff.  It was a little scary, a little fun, and a little annoying.  At one point, Kenz and I went down a place with tons of purse stands just to look around, and she ended up being held back with a lady on each arm who wouldn’t let her leave until she bought a purse!  It was a little terrifying, but kind of funny.  I got some super cute fake sparkly Toms for 50 qui, which is about 8 US dollars.  Not too bad.  We all came out of there with some pretty great purchases for very little money so that was pretty exciting.  Most of us have plans to go back again.

After we had all spent way more money than we should have, we met back at the hostel to go to dinner.  Walking to dinner was pretty eventful as we had to cross a huge intersection with traffic coming from all directions.  And no one stops or looks for pedestrians.  We were all fearing for our lives, and Taylor was about an inch away from losing hers.  Pretty scary.  Dinner was less eventful.  More rice, chicken, pork, chicken, and rice.  Also we learned that “No Smoking” signs mean absolutely nothing to the Chinese people.  That was lovely.

After dinner, a group of us decided to take the subway to the Olympic Square where Beijing hosted the summer Olympics in 2008.  That was so cool to see.  We went at night so everything was lit up and really looked amazing.  It was cool too because I definitely remember the 2008 Olympics, and how impressed the world was by China and their amazing ceremonies and facilities.  It was really exciting to see all those sites in person.  We couldn’t go inside any of the buildings, so we just wandered around outside.  It was fun to imagine what the place would have been like 4 years ago with the whole world swarming that small area.  There was a pretty good amount of people there tonight, but it was definitely quiet compared to how it would have been during the Olympics. 

Once again, the Chinese people made this experience even more fun.  We kept stopping to take pictures of each other in front of one building or another and, when we did, we would usually get a couple of Chinese people who stopped and asked to take a picture with us too.  At one point, I was taking a picture of Zach and Avery and as soon as I was done, a lady pulled on my arm and motioned for me to be in a picture with her and her baby.  Immediately after that picture, someone else asked me to be in their picture, and before I had even finished smiling for that one, I was being pulled into another one.  It was hilarious! Later, some sort of old men’s club (I don’t know, they all had matching hats) put their hats on our heads and pulled us into their group picture.  They also liked to take pictures of us when we were taking our own pictures.  When we were in front of The Cube (the swimming place) we found this little cement blocks that we decided to all stand on and take pictures of us doing Olympic poses.  Zach grabbed a random guy to take pictures of us with his ipad but, by the time we were done, there was a HUGE group of people gathered around taking pictures of us.  The same thing happened when we climbed into the big concrete Olympic rings to take a picture (which was a process in itself).  I couldn’t believe how many people were standing there taking pictures of us.  I was sure that most of them were just waiting for us to get down so that they could take their own pictures there but, as soon as we got down, the crowd disappeared.  So funny!  I just really love these people.

We made it back to our subway stop just before the subway closed for the night, and I was so excited to see my hard-as-rock bed.  China is exhausting!