My Chinese Adventure – Part 5

Oh this day I went shopping!

I started out on my day late today and went to the “Dong Wu Yuan Pi Fa Shi Chang” (The Distribution Centre near the Zoo). That place is a huge orgy of clothes, people, accessories, food, more people, lots of shouting, and big big bags (well, it is a place where retailers get their stocks from!)!

It was a maze everywhere! There are 3-4 huge shopping centres and within each are even more little shops closely huddled together! I cannot believe how many shops they managed to squeeze into one centre!!

The clothes came in so many colours and patterns. Sad to say, very few items caught my interest. With due respect to the chinese people, I feel their clothes are too “cheena” and really not quite something I would deem classic and something to die for. I didn’t buy anything for over an hour! I did however buy something in the end. I spent RMB 200 (SGD40) buying myself 3 Adidas jackets! I am very very pleased with my purchase. According to my friend I overpaid a bit but oh well, I shall not dwell on that since I am very happy with my purchase. One of the jackets is a slightly thick jacket – suitable for early spring. Lovely. Perfect for the office!

I had quite some heavy stuff to carry about so I went back to the hotel to put it all down before heading for lunch and the second part of my day.

I had a quickie lunch at this place near my Hotel. I have no idea what is the restaurant called. But but here’s what a friend and I shared.

That costed about RMB130/SGD$26 or so. The fish was damn huge and very nice!

It was late – about 5pm? We rushed off to the Temple of Heaven but all were closed! The park was still opened but the Temple itself was closed. Damn what a pity. Sigh. But we went as close as we could! Here are some pictures of the beautiful temple (the dome shaped tower) and the MASSIVE gardens around it.

It got dark real quick and after a day of shopping and (a bit of) sight seeing, we decided to have Peking Duck for dinner again! This time round, we decided to try the highly recommended Quan Ju De Duck Restaurant ontop of the Silk Street Complex.

It was a weekday and we went back to the Silk Street to see if the ridiculous pricfes that we were quoted for bags and such were going to prevail. AND WE WERE RIGHT! The prices DID NOT prevail and on a weekday (whereby tourists are fewer), we felt very important. Why? The last weekend we went, we (cos we look asian?) were ignored! The chinese sellers were trying their very best to get the attention of the caucasians that walked by them. Even when we (the stingy asians) were standing right in front of them interested to buy! Today, all of them wanted us in their shops! So now that we know that we had the “upper” hand, bargaining was easier. We got the prices we wanted quite easily and it was easier to make friends. We dropped by this lady’s shop and bought RMB 500 (SGD100) worth of bags from her! I got 2 Gucci Bags and a Spy Fendi Bag from her.

What a lovely day of shopping. After that we proceeded for dinner. So much shopping to do at the ground floor surely made our trip to dinner on the 5th floor (the duck restaurant) that much longer. Will blog about dinner another day!