Shopping, Massage, and Pineapple Rice

Yesterday I went to a Chinese wholesale market with a new Chinese friend, a lovely woman who had been friends with Heather Coon when she was here two years ago. When we got to the wholesale market I think I was the only westerner in a huge building with thousands of individual kiosks divided into four floors. Stall after stall of housewares were featured on one floor; leathergoods on another; underwear and pajamas on a third; jewelry on a fourth. In an adjacent building, there was a floor of stationery products, another of shoes, another of silk scarves and pashminas. No space goes unused in Beijing: people even sold hats and small purses on the overpass and one woman had a box of tiny live birds for sale, no bigger than walnuts. According to my new friend, most of the people who own the kiosks at the wholesale market are from a town near Shanghai that is also her home town. They speak a different dialect than Mandarin, and she spoke in that dialect to all the vendors she knew and some she didn't. In China you can bargain for almost any purchase, except in stores with fixed prices, and of course local people get a better deal than foreigners. According to her (and I don't doubt it) people who speak the shopkeepers' dialect get the best deal of all. I bought some decorative pillow covers, China T-shirts, and a hair dryer at prices that seemed exceptionally reasonable. Then we went to a salon for a foot massage. I also opted for a neck and back massage that included having someone (a lightweight woman) walk on your back as she supported herself on bars that resembled the frame for a canopy over a bed. All I can say is ....OUCH! It was pretty vigorous (lots of twisting of shoulders and knees) but the back-walking was reasonably comfortable although I should check for footprints. The foot massage, which starts with your feeting soaking in wooden tub of hot, hot water mixed with some powdered tea, is more my speed. At the end of the day Heather's friend took me to a place that the students who have gone on this trip before will recognize: Dai Ethnic Restaurant, serving food from a province that borders Southeast Asia (Yunnan). It's a storefront, not too big, but quite popular and we had to take a number. The back wall features an enlarged photo of the owner, young and handsome, smiling broadly as he shakes the hand of Chou En-Lai, welcoming him to his province; now fifty years older but very successful, the owner usually sits behind the cash register. We ate pineapple rice, hot rice mixed with fresh cooked pineapple served in the hollowed-out shell; a hot-pot style chicken soup with long, soft rice noodles and fresh herbs, and a medium-spicy chicken dish with chilis and chopped green and red peppers. I drank coke (ke le) and we both drank hot tea; I seem to need twice as much liquid per meal as any Chinese person because I love spicy dishes but need to cool them down. Then we walked back to the dorm and she rode off on her bicycle into the night.