ISpyShanghai

I’ve bought some horrible stuff at Shanghai’s various fabric markets. Shiny blue jackets that I’ll never wear, an ice-white linen suit that saw a brief outing at one of Dingle’s fashionable BBQs, and numerous pairs of trousers that developed holes at just the wrong place and time.

Still though, winter is coming up and I can’t be seen wearing last year’s coat- what would the neighbours say?

Here then is my timely guide to getting a good price at the Fabric market:

Act like you’re not bothered
Only suckers act like they really want to have a suit made, suckers who get ripped off. You really haven’t decided whether you’re going to buy today, maybe you’ll buy a hamburger instead.

This is a hard act to pull off when you’re specifying fabrics, number of buttons, extra-crotch reinforcing etc. so pretend to treat all decisions hypothetically;

“Assuming I was looking for a jacket, then maybe I’d like you to copy this one that I’ve brought all the way across town in a plastic bag.

Perhaps I would want you to make the waist slightly bigger, because it’s possible that I eat a lot of mashed potato and gravy at KFC“

Subtly imply that you don’t have much money

“You don’t need to make the pockets very big, usually all I carry is a bus pass and some stale rice“

Speak Chinese
The more the better, but at the very least you need to manage a passable ”Aiyo!” when the first tentative prices are being floated around. Extra bonus points are added for a

“Tai gui le!” (too expensive!)
or a
“Wo bu shi ri ben ren!!!” (”I’m not Japanese!”)

If you’re white / otherly foreign, then speaking Chinese is basically a way of saying that you’re not a tourist, and it also gives the stall holders something fun to laugh about when your back is turned.

and a free health check too

Speak Shanghainese
Slightly more tricky to pull off, but expat wisdom suggests that whilst stupid old whitey always pays more than the Chinese, out of towners also pay less more than anyone who can speak Taxi-driver talk.
(fixed 30th Oct, ta Liam)

Don’t blink first
Market stall holders can spot a sucker at 30 paces, but if you’re following the steps above it’s going to take them a bit longer to work out what kind of sucker you are.

Prolong their realisation by point-blank refusing to name a price that you want to pay. Let them name a price (which you should find both hilarious and horrifying) and have them come down a couple of notches first.

Ideally you should have the clothes hanging up in your wardrobe at home, with patches of wear beginning to show from a few seasons of regular rotation before you call up the tailor and make your first low ball offer.

Remember: stay vigilant at all times

Do the walk off. (But not that walk off)
Everyone knows the old walk-away-in-disgust technique- where the stall holder is supposed to chase after you in tears begging you to come back and pay whatever small coins you have in your pocket.

Maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t- but there are few things more embarassing than doing the walk off and then having to come back shamefaced because you can’t find another stall that’s willing to make a lace girdle for a 30 year old man.

If you do decide to go this direction, then pretend that you’re breaking up with someone. It’s not them, it’s you, you want to think things over, you can’t help thinking that somewhere out there is a piece with better quality, a cheaper price, or sleeve buttons that actually fasten (hmm, this metaphor needs some work).

Finally

Always remember that the following phrases have no meaning whatsoever and should be ignored:

• “Friend price”
• Final offer
• Ohh handsome!
• Where are you from? Oh I like England/USA/Botswana very much!
• Please put underwear back on! Do not touch fabric like that!

There are two main fabric markets in Shanghai:

South Bund Soft Spinning Materials Market
399 Lujiabang Lu (near Nanpu Bridge)

Shiliupu Material Shopping Market
Dongmen Lu near Zhonghua Lu

My girlfriend’s Mum has been visiting for the last few days, so as well as not being allowed to sit around in my underpants watching “Thundercats“, I’ve also been to a few tourist spots and restaurants with the honored guest.

Xiao Long Bao; Shanghai’s fish ‘n’ chips

Over the past year of having visitors, I’ve built up a few tips for anyone wanting to entertain visitors to Shanghai:

1. Instead of going up the Pearl Tower, have a drink on the 37th floor of the Shanghri-La hotel next door. It’s open later, you’re at roughly the same height, have the bonus of actually being able to see the Pearl Tower as well as everything else, and the money you would have spent on admission buys you a drink
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The last time I saw the Scratch Perverts (3 DJs who move their gramophone recordings back and forth to make young people dance) at Bonbon was in April. They were mint, the club was packed to the gills, and a smashing time was had by all.

They came back again on Saturday, this time with half-naked dancing girls, MC Jin from the states (who I’ve wanted to see for a long, long time) and free t-shirts for the punters. Predictably the club was packed, repacked, and packed thrice more- if you wanted a swig of your drink you had to ask the guy next to you to breathe in.

Once I got used to people shoving me like I was trying to carry a canoe onto the subway at 8:30 am, and the fact that Bonbon smells like the stairwell of a Glasgow multi-storey car park, it was a good laugh. I danced as much as my 8 inches of personal space would allow, had the inside of my mouth rinsed out with other people’s sweat, and went to bed happy. It wasn’t, however, as good as the first time I saw them, last week’s “Bananas” night, or getting raging drunk on alcoholic beer (4 more booze-free days left).

In the morning I went to pick up a suit at the fabric market. I’d specified a slim fitting number along the lines of Michael Caine in “Alfie”, but something got lost in translation and the guy gave me a baggy sack of cloth that I’d have needed to tie a piece of string round to see my hands. I gave it him back, took the ready-made one off the dummy as a compromise, and headed to the Insect & Bird Market.

Birds

This is a place that the enigmatic Emma had spotted in the Lonely Planet. 30 odd stalls selling turtles, kittens, Minah birds and hundreds and hundreds of Crickets in tiny cages.

Insects

I’m told that Chinese people like to buy these, hang them up in their house and listen to the gentle chirp-chirp of an insect starving to death inside a grisly wicker cage.
Odd? Yeah, I’d say that was odd.

Actually though, that can’t be the whole story because there were also stalls selling tiny paintbrushes to clean (or maybe tickle) insects, ceramic water dishes the size of a Leprechaun’s contact lens, men comparing row after row of tiny insects in specimen dishes like farmers at a bloodstock auction, and trays of cocoons hatching in front of watchful (/bored) sales clerks. It seems like bugs are big business here, but whether trained to fight to the death, kept as tiny pets for kids in small apartments, or ground up for medicine I couldn’t say.

Market

When I lived in Korea, most of the locals would cope with the rising heat and humidity of summer by going into shopping malls and buying shirts with slogans like:

“Express yourself in the feeling! Power-play tooth quest!”

The average Shanghainese however, faces the problem head-on, and falls asleep. Whether it’s a taxi driver with his seat reclined and feet out of the window by the side of a major road, a commuter holding onto her strap on the packed subway, or the dangerous driver of a 20 tonne truck full of pigs, the Chinese people can catch ZZZs pretty much anywhere.

I haven’t watched the Olympics for, ooh, it must be at least 3 years, but if competitive napping is on the program for Beijing 2008 then I expect China to sweep the board- place your bets now before the rush.

But what to wear in the summer? Most of the fellas around my way tend to go for the bare chest and shorts look (FYI going to the gym hasn’t really taken off in Shanghai) but those that do cover up, go for pyjamas.

When I say “pyjamas” I’m not having a dig at the traditional Chinese silken outfit, I’m talking about genuine over-sized-buttons, flanellete, big-lapelles, pictures-of-teddy-bears-wearing-nightgowns, the full bit. What is bizarre though, is that I’ve never seen someone wearing pyjamas whilst having a nap. A shiny new donkey for anyone who can send me a photo of that.

I was no good at drinking this weekend, Friday night I was home by 2am, Saturday by a bit after midnight. For future reference I should remember that a jug of JD and Coke doesn’t sit well on top of Guinness and a steak sandwich, and staying up until 8am chatting on MSN messenger isn’t the best way to set yourself up for a productive day.

By rights, Saturday should have been a total wash-out, but my friend Emma- oh OK then, my girlfriend Emma- came round after she finished her morning lessons (teaching, she’s not a 14 year old schoolgirl) so I couldn’t really just lie in bed all day. Our first stop was at the fabric market where I’d ordered a pair of linen suits. I was dead chuffed with them, the buttons on the sleeves actually fasten, the lining is as smooth as polyester silk and although one jacket only has one arm and the other has three, that’s a an average of two per jacket. Not bad for a total bill of 700RMB (47 squid) I’m sure you’ll agree.

After that we walked through some crazy markets and backstreets in the old town / Bund area. Even though Emma is as English as cucumber sandwiches, she speaks pretty good Chinese which is a lot of fun. You get a lot more out of a walk down a typical Shanghai street when you’re with someone who knows the lingo

Emma- “This woman says you have very long eyelashes”
Me- “She’s right, I have”
Chinese lady – <something or other>
Emma- “She wants to know what method you used to grow them”

——————————————–

Me- “Go on, ask him what that meat is”
Emma- <something or other>
Chinese guy- <something or other>
Emma- “It’s a pig’s ear. And he wants to know if we want to buy any”
Me- “Umm tell him we’re full!”
Emma- <something>
Him <something else>
Emma- “He says ‘If you’re tall you’ll fit it in‘!”

Made me laugh anyway.

Enough cultural insight, here’s some lads outside Bonbon that were so drunk they’d wet themselves.