Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Today M---and I woke up anticipating a trip to the strawberry farm with M---'s school. I had arranged for P--- to stay with our ayi, so I could go on the school bus with M--- and take part in the field trip. But I should have known better. After all, this is China.

We arrived at school (dressed in M---'s school uniform, as directed) to find a class full of kids NOT in uniform. Hmmm...I asked Teacher Geoff what was going on. As luck (or, lack thereof) would have it, another school went to the strawberry farm yesterday and cleaned them out. There were no ripe, red strawberries to be had today. This was devastating news to M---, who was counting on a morning with Mom (and who resists changes to his plans only slightly less than his change-averse mother). But after tears, more tears and still more tears, I found myself in an unusual position - I was child-free for 2 1/2 hours!!! What to do with myself for that time?

After contemplating a number of impractical alternatives (heading to Taikang Lu, which is an hour's drive from the school, getting yet another massage, running away with the circus) I decided to ask Mr. Lu to take me back to the plant/flower market about 2 miles from our apartment. We have 3 balconies, all of which are barren desert balconies right now. Michael and I have been planning to get some plants for the balconies, and what better time to browse than without children?

We arrived at the plant market and Mr. Lu, as is customary, accompanied me inside to ensure that: 1) I don't get lost (it's happened) and 2) I don't get ripped off (this has also happened more than I care to admit). I began to wander and browse, without hesitation, as I am now accustomed to having someone accompany me everywhere. I saw an escalator and decided to explore. Oddly, the second floor of the plant market was filled with a random assortment of home furnishings and decorations. There were a number of traditional Chinese wooden furniture stores (with the fancy, carved wooden furniture). There were fake flower-arrangement shops (whose poor quality surpassed even my low expectations of Chinese fakes), frame shops, shops with fake porcelain vases and shops with fake carved Jade pieces. There was even a store selling fake antique phones that you can actually dial!! But the find of the day was at one of the furniture shops, where I stumbled across a woman knitting a sleeve for a child's sweater.

Using my 3-year-old level Chinese, I asked her where she got her yarn. This was difficult, considering I had no idea how to say yarn. Finally, she understood and started telling me where the store was. Great. I should know by now not to ask these questions until Mr. Lu is by my side, because the chance that I will actually understand the answer and be able to repeat it accurately is somewhere between the chances of someone naming a star for me and my winning the lottery. So...I found Mr. Lu in a nearby shop, brought him to the store and asked again where the yarn shop was. The lady told him, and he told me it was on Dongfang Lu- the same road on which M---'s school is located. Interesting...I thought. But I wasn't there for yarn, I was there for plants.

We headed back downstairs and began looking in earnest for plants. I found some at one vendor, but they were too expensive. Mr. Lu gave me his subtle head shake and whispered, "Tai gui le." Got it. On to the next vendor. Here, I found some beautiful plants - 3 huge ones with lovely ceramic pots for 700 RMB. (The pots alone would cost me that at Bordine's.) I had planned to bring Michael back on the weekend to help with the final decorating decision (he has an affinity for decorating that I find surprising given his very strong affinity for heterosexual sex...). But when the vendor stepped away, Mr. Lu looked at me and said, "I think this is very good price." Hmmm...I nodded and said, "Okay. Let's do it."

Now for the classic Mr. Lu move. As his son told me, "Everything is on sale every day for my father." Mr. Lu looked at the woman when she returned and asked if she could reduce the price a little bit. No. Oh, he says, too expensive. No. He asks for 500. She offers 650. I shake my head and make a motion to leave. Mr. Lu tells her this is still too expensive. 550. No. Okay, we will leave. Then, as usual - the magic price appears. 600 RMB for all three, plus free delivery. We're in! Frankly, I hadn't expected her to budge at all, since the last time we were at this market none of the vendors would negotiate. But the prospect of a big sale on a Wednesday (with no other customers in sight) was apparently enough to bring down the great wall around the price. And, as promised, my plants showed up promptly at 3:00.

Having found unexpected balcony beautification project success, I asked Mr. Lu if we could try to find the yarn shop. Sure, no problem. Well...maybe. No problem to try, but maybe a problem to actually find it. You see, we soon discovered that the shop was on one of those little "Chinese" streets that is lined with tiny shops selling everything from cheap mops to children's clothes to toilets. These stores don't cater to "Weiguorens" (aka, foreigners). They often have no signs. They can be tucked inside the driveways to apartment complexes. They probably have a bunch of stuff in front of them - stuff that is completely unrelated to the wares inside. So we drove and looked. We did a U-turn. We drove and looked. We joked that we needed to find a little old lady and ask her (very loudly, Mr. Lu reminded me, since she would probably be hard-of-hearing) where the store was. Just as I was preparing to give up, Mr. Lu exclaimed, "Ahhh...zai nali!!!" And there it was, indeed. I NEVER would have spotted this - in fact, I might have missed it if I were walking past it. So we did another U-turn, parked the van, and headed inside.

As you can imagine, the shop was tiny. And it's no exaggeration to say that when I walked in, the women in the store (there were 6 of them crammed in there, all standing up knitting something) stopped talking and stared, as only the Chinese can. Apparently they don't get many Americans in there. But I didn't care. I jumped up and down (literally - I did - you can ask Mr. Lu) and said, "Oh, this is so cool!!! I don't have to go all the way over to Fuxing Lu for yarn now!!" This startled them back to life and one laughed and said, with a thick Chinese accent, "Cool!!!" The rest of them laughed and they went back to knitting. I browsed at my leisure and looked at the sweaters hanging on the walls. To be honest, with the exception of the size of the store and the amount of dust on the bags of yarn (it was the standard amount of Chinese filth that I've come to expect everywhere here), the store wasn't much different than the yarn shops in the States. The walls were lined, floor to ceiling, with shelves of yarn. Cottons, wools, blends, etc. There were needles for sale, and a number of items on the wall that they would teach you how to make.

Then one of them approached me with a beautiful shawl (I think she had knitted it) and asked me how much I would have to pay for it if I bought it in the States. I told her probably $100 (it was large, well-made, hand-made and strikingly lovely). "Oh," she said, "I sell to you for 300 RMB." 300 RMB = $40. I responded (in Chinese) that I didn't want to buy it, but I would love to learn how to make it, since it appeared to be made using a number of pieces that were knit in the round and then sewn together somehow. Well, this was just too much for them. They beamed and asked me when I would come and knit with them - they would be happy to teach me how. And, if I bought the yarn there, they would teach me for free (a slightly better deal than at home, where I have to pay for yarn AND lessons). The store owner (a young gal, probably about my age, who spoke English quite well) was almost endearing because she was so excited by the prospect of my coming to knit with them. Of course, once I improve my Chinese and start gabbing at them nonstop like I do at home, they'll probably be less excited to have me there. But while I'm just good PR, they love me!

Anyhow, I bought some yarn with which I am going to make a scarf. It's a yarn unlike any I've seen at home - much of what they had was similar to what I find at home, and while there is nothing wrong with that (and I much prefer the Chinese prices), I always like to get something unique if I can. But I do plan to return next week during nap times to try and learn how to knit that shawl. Odds are, my Chinese will improve by being there, too. No better way to learn a new language than to immerse yourself in a situation where no ones speaks your native tongue.

Oh, and speaking of my Chinese, I had a breakthrough today at the plant market. For the first time since I began attempting to speak Chinese, I was able to understand the shopkeepers' responses when I asked how much something cost. Typically, I ask, they reply and then Mr. Lu translates into English. But today, I knew what he was going to say before he said it. Hooray!!! It's a small step, but it felt good, nonetheless. Maybe my goal of fluency isn't such a stretch goal after all...