Knockoffs everything

On Sunday, we started the day by going to the Temple of Heaven.  The Temple of Heaven is that famous round temple that is often shown in pictures of China.  On our way out of the Temple of Heaven, we stopped in a tea house.  We all sat around a large table and experienced a tea ceremony, which is basically a tasting of different kinds of teas prepared in front of us.  All these teas supposedly have beneficial “powers”, such as lowering high blood pressure or cholesterol, helping memory, making your skin more beautiful.  I enjoyed the experience.

Then we stopped at the pearl market.  The pearl market has everything from real government approved grade pearls to cheap fake jewelry and Canal Street-type knockoffs.  One thing and maybe the only thing I wanted to buy myself in China were pearl earrings, so I went to one of the very nice store inside the pearl market with our local tour guide Isabella, a very very nice lady, and she helped me bargain for the earrings.  In the end I got them for 40% off the ticket price.  Not as low as what you can bargain the knockoffs for, but the lowest they would actually sell them at; I did try the walk-away technique – it didn’t work at that point.  The knockoffs were what you would expect: designer handbags, shoes, “silk” scarves, sunglasses and electronics.  Electronics are still interesting to me because I feel like a fake Louis Vuitton is one thing but a fake Canon camera??  Then again there are fake Mercedes in China!  That is quite funny I think.  To me, that is the prime of all knockoffs – a car!

After the pearl market, we headed back to the hotel, around lunchtime, and our group program was over for the day.  A lot of us went to the mall near the hotel to eat.  There are quite a few restaurants along with some fast food chains in the mall.  It’s a very nice mall.  We went to a Chinese restaurant and I had a delicious Wonton soup and we shared dumplings.  It was so far the best meal I’ve had in China.

After our delicious lunch, everybody did different things: massage at the hotel, nap.  I went to the Summer Palace with Francesca and Carlo.  We took a cab from our hotel and got there an hour later.  It was kind of far.  Although the cab fare was what you would expect in NYC going from midtown to downtown in 10 minutes: $12.  And gas is more expensive in China than in the US.  Not sure how they make any profit.  The Summer Palace is where the last two Emperors spent their summers, up to 6 months a year.  It’s a huge piece of property with a man-made lake, about a foot deep, and about 30-40 little pavilions or houses everywhere. We walked along the lake for about an hour and a half.  It was very beautiful.  I assume I had been there on my first trip to China, but it didn’t seem familiar.  When we were done at the Summer Palace, we were afraid we weren’t going to find a cab to take us back to the hotel because the Summer Palace’s last entry was at 5:00pm and it was already 5:30pm with not too many people left around.  However, as soon as we walked outside, a “cab” was waiting there, so we got on.  I put cab in quotation mark because it didn’t look like most of the other cabs, but it did have a meter – one that turns twice as fast!  We didn’t care, it was already so cheap for an hour cab ride and we were lucky we got one so fast.

The thing I’ve been most amazed by is the infrastructure.  The roads are impeccable and so many buildings are what the very nice buildings in the US look like.  A lot of it look very luxurious and if you take the Chinese characters signs out, you feel like you are back home in a very nice part of town.  That is one thing I have no memory of back in 1995.  I will really have to look at all the pictures from my first trip to China.  I should have done that before I left, but I can still compare when I get back.

Once we got back to the hotel, since I had been cold all day, or actually the past two days, I felt like going to the hotel pool, hoping for a hot tub.  Yes, I am one of the few people I think brought a bathing suit because I did look up the hotels before we left and saw that they had a pool, not so surprising anyway; most hotels do have pools.  But unfortunately, no hot tub.  I walked down the pool steps to my waist and I was still cold so I decided it was enough and sat in the sauna for a few minutes.  When I got back to my room around 8pm, my roommate was sleeping; she had been partying pretty hard the last two nights.  I decided to lay down as well and fell asleep.  Later, I woke up, deciding I should go have dinner somewhere.  Too late, it was 11:30pm.  Back to sleep.