Moving out was interesting. The Zhangs were pretty chill about it the night before and the morning of, but when I came back at three to get my stuff they flipped out. I have no idea why, but they both started shouting at me in Chinese the moment I walked in the door, saying different things and speaking really quickly. All I could do was look at them helplessly and say “I’m sorry, I don’t understand” repeatedly. Eventually they realized we were at an impasse and called Bin Bin, who sweetly and apologetically told me that I “must give them their keys back and leave immediately” while both parents continued to shout in the background. (They also gave me my unopened jam back, but I noticed they kept the bottle of wine in its usual spot behind the TV.) In the middle of all the ruckus, Max, who had told me he’d help me move out, called saying he’d arrived, so I excused myself amidst more shouting and took Zen breaths all the way to the gate.
We made quick work of the suitcases despite having to carry them down six flights of stairs and walked the two minutes or so to the international students’ dorm. The IES literature claimed it was the “nicest dorm on campus”. That may well be true, but I’d hate to see the other dorms. It’s pretty average – small rooms, crappy lighting, communal bathrooms (albeit with Western plumbing). We do get close to 70 channels of TV though. The Chinese roommates aren’t here yet. They will arrive after we get back from our long trips.
Max took a nap on my bed while I went to my final class of the day, calligraphy. For the first time, we got to use the brushes and write. I actually use the term “write” pretty loosely, since we only made single horizontal and vertical strokes. I knew calligraphy wasn’t something you could pick up in half an hour, but it’s way more difficult than I expected. Fang Laoshi’s strokes are so straight and even, and mine are invariably wavy, blobby, and malformed, although I did get a couple nice ones in, probably through sheer beginner’s luck.
I returned to the room and Max and I decided to go out for hotpot, a uniquely
The place I’d thought sold hotpot turned out to be a standard-issue noodle place. By this point I had my heart set on hotpot dinner, so we continued up and about a block further discovered a relatively upscale-looking place packed with Gen-X Chinese. We were seated, provided with aprons with the restaurant’s logo (so dorky, so cool) and given picture menus that explained exactly what we could order.
How it worked was like this.
1. Pick a style of broth that you want to cook your stuff in. We chose the fairly standard half-mild, half-spicy broth. Half our hotpot arrived with clear, lemongrassy chicken broth, and the other half had a mouthnumbingly hot mix of chili oil,
2. Pick things you want to dip in the hotpot. The options ranged from the bizarre (duck heads, baby bullfrogs) to the relatively mundane (beef, carrots, tiny steamed buns). We got plates of thinly sliced mutton, tofu, dumplings, mushrooms, and yams.
3. If you ordered a spicy hotpot, get a beer, because water alone is NOT going to make the burning in your mouth go away.
Once the food came in, we took turns randomly cooking it in the different sections of the pot and making fun of our aprons. This is an incredibly fun way to eat, and I imagine it would be even better with a big group. Dipping foods are surprisingly rare in the world’s cultures, which I don’t understand because the potential for playing with your food and laughing about it is really high.* It was by far the best meal I’ve had here, and we left very full but having eaten almost everything set before us. The cost? $7 each, AND I got a coupon for about $4 off next time I come in, which will undoubtedly be very soon.
Then, this morning, I woke up with an insatiable craving for the fried sesame-paste balls I’ve fallen in love with here. (This happens every morning, actually.) I knew of a stall conveniently located near ______________** but decided I wanted to do some shopping first. However, as a budget-minded student, I wanted to go somewhere cheap, so I decided to set off to what may well be the bargaining capital of
The name is a bit of a misnomer. This enormous, six-floor plaza does have some silk for sale, but the vast majority of it is taken up by knockoff designer goods. Want a D&G top? Some Calvin Klein jeans? A Prada bag? You’ll find a fake version of it here, and dear God, do the people who work in the stalls there ever want to sell it to you. Going in is pretty overwhelming, because the salespeople are hyperattentive and if you walk within a half-mile radius of their stall, they’ll try their best to suck you in, sometimes even stepping in front of you to make you stop walking, all the while saying things like “Lady, want pants, want a belt?” and “We have cheapest jacket, cheapest Armani, Gucci, lady, jackets for you.” I wasn’t prepared for the level of sensory overload I got going in, but acclimated pretty quickly and learned to deflect everyone’s propositions with a quick “bu yao” (I don’t want it) and keep walking. The stuff there was all right, but the atmosphere was much more interesting, so I resolved to walk around and see what all there was to see.
If there’s one thing I’m bad at, though, it’s “just looking” when I go shopping, and I soon found myself drawn to a gray flannel trenchcoat. The girl running the stall, who was maybe 25 or so, immediately noticed that I was looking at one of her things and shoved her way over to me through the masses.
“You like jacket, lady?” she asked.
I responded in Chinese that I thought it was pretty. She seemed happy that I could speak Chinese, and we chatted in that language for a while about where I was from, how long I was in China, and how old I was (and if I had a boyfriend, weirdly). The whole time, she was pulling various sizes of the coat off of hangers. The biggest size – an XXL – ended up fitting. (I’m a pretty standard width for
Here is where the bargain part comes in. The stalls in the Silk Market aren’t like clothes in boutiques or department stores, where the prices are posted and you pay them. In the Silk Market, there are no prices, nothing is nailed down, and you have to work it out with the person at the stall. Our exchange went like this (prices converted to USD):
Her: It’s $140.
Me: I can’t pay that. I’ll give you $20.***
Her: You’re so pretty. It will look so nice on you. It’s Max Mara [it obviously was not actually], it’s an American brand. $90, because it will look so nice on you. You’re American, you’re rich.
Me: I’m American, but I’m a student and I don’t have much money. I’ll give you $30.
Her: You’re clever, you speak Chinese really well. Since you’re a clever girl, $70.
Me: $70? Too expensive.
Her: Shh! Don’t let other people hear! They can’t know I’m giving you that price. They’ll all want that price. This is a special price, special for you.
Me: I’ll pay $40.
Her: I can’t make money like that! How about $60?
Me: $45.
Her: $50. What is the most you’ll pay?
Me: $45.
Her: Not $50?
Me: $45.
Her: Okay, you can have it! But you can’t tell anyone else you paid that little. They’ll all want it that cheap. This is special price, special only for you. Give me a kiss. [She turns her cheek up toward me and I give her a peck.]
She bagged my coat up (“You want a bag? I’ll give you one, only for you!”) and I walked off, happy with my success. The knockoff Coach bags looked nice, so I’ll probably end up going back, with a couple pointers in mind.
Tip 1: Know exactly what you want to buy. I looked at the coat on a whim, not realizing that at places like this, once the salesperson gets it on you, you’re never going to escape without it. (I’m happy with my coat, though – I didn’t bring a warm one here with me, and it can replace my heinous, unfitted Old Navy one that makes me look like a man. See how I rationalized this to myself?) Here, even walking away is a bargaining method – more than once, I saw sellers chasing prospective buyers down the aisles, offering them ever-lower prices. Anyway, if you’re not entirely sure you’re interested in something, don’t pick it up or try it on.
Tip 2: Know exactly what you want to pay. Before buying my coat, I watched some other people bargain and got a sense for what was a decent starting price to offer and what the average prices people actually paid were. In this way, the Silk Market is great, because if you go in saying “I want a handbag for no more than $30” you can refuse to pay more than that. From the little that I saw, the salespeople usually came around, and the final price was much closer to the buyer’s first offer than the seller’s.
Coat in tow, I subwayed it over to sesame balls and then Nanluogu, where I did some gift shopping for various family members and tried a couple interesting street foods I’d seen around.
The first thing I tried is called suannai, which means “sour milk” in Chinese. It’s essentially a really liquid version of plain yogurt, about the consistency of a smoothie. Although you can get it prepackaged at some supermarkets, the best ones are also the sketchiest: at the omnipresent neighborhood stores that sell cartons of cigarettes, liquor, and bottled drinks, neighborhood suannai vendors come around every morning and fill up the store’s little ceramic jars, a bit smaller than a soda can, with fresh suannai. The jars are then covered with a paper lid and a rubber band. When you buy one, you drink it and just return the jar to anywhere that sells suannai when you’re done. They’re very good, especially in the mornings.
The other thing I ate is a mystery to me. While walking on NLG the first day I was there, I saw a giant line outside a small mom-and-pop storefront. I couldn’t even see what was for sale inside, but since Chinese people are willing to actually line up for only two things (good food and permits for something or other) I figured I might have hit on something great and decided to line up with them.
A couple minutes into the line, I noticed that many people coming out the door were carrying with them cups of frozen yogurt, suannai, or smoothies. When I finally got to the front, I couldn’t read the menu, so I tried my luck and asked for what the person in front of me had ordered. The woman at the counter handed me a half-pint cup of…something white, with sugared red beans on top. I took it outside with a spoon and ate tentatively.
The Chinese don’t do dessert well. They make killer pastries, but dessert as a concept is relatively new to them. This, though, was amazing. It was the consistency of a very liquid pudding, but less sweet, lighter, and milkier. It wasn’t too sugary – the dominant flavor was definitely light, fresh milk, which nicely contrasted with the sweet, slightly nutty red beans sprinkled on top. I could not believe how good it was. I’ve seen it a couple other places since then, but I got another one today for the first time since I’d first tried it, and I couldn’t believe how good it was this time either. The store where I got it just calls it hongdou de, but that just refers to the beans on top of it, so I have no idea what its actual name is. I will find out someday, and then…oh man.
I'll be traveling around the south for the next couple weeks, so don't expect any significant updates until after the 24, when I get back.
Dumpling Tally: 30
*An example: Max started pretending his little foods were political prisoners undergoing interrogation when he was dipping them in the hot oil. (“I’ll never tell you where the tofu treasure is hidden! Not the oil! NOT THE OIL! NOOOOOOOOO glub glub glub…”)
**Shame on you if you weren’t able to fill in the blank with “Nanluogu Hutong”.
***This seems like an almost insulting discrepancy, but it’s not. The expectation with bargaining is that the seller starts way higher than they’re willing to accept, and the buyer starts with way less than they’re willing to pay, with both parties gradually working their way toward the middle. If anyone ever accepted the other person’s initial offer they’d be a huge chump – it’s just unheard of.
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