The "HEY LADY" ladies

"Hey Lady you want to buy T-shirt? Very cheap. Special price for you because you beautiful lady."
"Where you from? America?? Ooooh you rich. You want buy watch? Special price for you because you American!"
"Hey Sir, this you wife? She beautiful lady, you want to buy scarf?"
"Hey Lady! You want bag? My price is 600 yuan but because you my first customer, you special price of 440 Yuan. What??? You give me only 35yuan? Why you joking with me? Come on, give me No Joking price! See the quality? This not cheap. You want cheap you buy other bag. This bag very good quality. O.k. O.k. I give you this bag for 400yuan, this is very special price because I like you..ok.?"
"Hey Lady, Hey Sir, you no walk away. OK. give me your best price and no joking price, see the quality?"





You get the picture. If you know me you know that I am terribly claustrophobic and I was in Beijing no longer than an hour before I had my first panic attack. I call them the "Hey Lady" ladies. They all come at you at once competing to be heard and to sell their wares. They grab you and try to pull you into their booths. They block your way and stick t-shirts and other junk in your face. Very aggressive and overwhelming. I ran away with my hands over my head yelling, "Get me out of here". True story.

So yeah, I'm not much of a shopper and China is all about shopping. Arghhh....look at all the crap! I am proud to say that neither Andy nor I bought any touristy stuff no matter how cheaply it was offered.

Because it's EVERYWHERE you go that you get accosted, in order to survive, I started making a game out of it. Since the Chinese (like the Koreans) always assume that any white person is American we started answering them in other languages such as German, French, Spanish, and Italian, (yes we can speak a little of this and a little of that). It was hilarious until we were shouting German phrases all they way down the hall of an underground subway shopping station and caught the attention of some real Germans. (Apparently there are a lot of Germans in China.)

Another tactic when we were approached with someone trying to sell us something (like a pair of socks) we in turn tried to sell them something...like one of my hair scrunchies. They would usually walk away really confused.

Also I went to China with one goal in mind and that was to find SOMETHING ANYTHING Made in America.
Well, the only thing made in America that I found were me and Andy.