I went with Kevin, who had some friends that are teaching at the International School in Shanghai. We stayed with them for the weekend, so that helped with expenses. The first evening when we arrived, we all went out for drinks. It had been awhile since I did that and it was a good time. We played some darts later in the evening, and it took me back to my college days, playing darts with Kevin, Tom, and Geoff at Minksy's in Ames. Good times!
The next day we went to the older part of Shanghai that has been redone as a shopping district. You go there and walk around at different shops and try to bargain for some goods. The highlight was bargaining for fake Rolex's.
They sell knock-off Rolex' that are really cheap, but look like the real thing. To do this, we often went into some back alley's that were people's houses. Inside they had the watches that they would then try to sell. Obviously they try to rip people off, but if you know what you are doing you can drop the price quite a bit.
I was there with Kevin, and Joel (his friend who teaches at the school). We kept negotiating, knowing that we were buying cheap watches and not wanting to spend a lot of money.
In the course of the bargaining, I was holding a couple of watches and the lady knocked one of them out of my hands. It was an accident, but the watch fell to the ground. It did not break, but it did stop running and thus needed to be fixed. This is how cheap these watches are. She did not make me pay for it, but they weren't happy. I figured it was her fault, plus they sell such poorly made watches, that it was not my problem.
We went to a couple of different places and eventually we did buy some watches for a pretty good deal, but mine broke in a bout 10 minutes. I think the problem might be with the battery, so I am going to get it checked out here in Taiwan. I guess it's probably fitting given that I broke one. Outside of the watches, I also bought a couple of propaganda posters from the Communist governments led by Mao, and some DVDs, including Growing Pains Season 1.
Outside of bargaining, we also had a chance to go to the downtown area and walk around at some of the modern buildings, including the famous Pearl Tower. That was pretty fun as well, and me and Kevin had some good adventures trying to figure out how to cross the rive. We eventually wound up on a ferry. It began to rain and we got soaked as we walked around, but the whole experience made for a good story.
Hopefully I'll have time to put up another blog on the China trip.
