I kinda like Friday’s lessons coz we’ll always watch some interesting movie which are quite insightful actually… today’s movie was a Chinese film called “洗澡”, which means “shower”, but don’t worry, it’s not some film with lotza showering scenes… haha… it’s actually quite a touching movie about the protagonist who left his family and hometown to work in the city at another part of china… his old father owns a 澡堂 (public bath), and lives with his retarded brother… yet the 2 find simple happiness running the business, with lotza close ties with the other villagers… it’s a movie that I don’t think I would ever have considered watching, if the teacher hadn’t screened it during lesson… haha…
After lunch, we had lunch at metro city… tried this yong tau foo style 干煲炒，where we picked miscellaneous items, such as chicken meat, mushrooms, vege, luncheon meat by weight, and they’ll just be cooked with some dried chilli and other spices in a wok… it was quite interesting… slightly spicy but alright, went well with rice… just make sure you keep those dried chillis and small pepper seeds out of your mouth… =)
干煲炒
We planned to go qipu rd 七铺路 today, so we took the mtr to 南京东路 and walked quite a distance, for about 15mns in the rain, before we finally reached the shopping malls. There’re quite a few malls at 七铺路, known to sell lotza imitation branded goods, at prices which you must daringly bargain for… otherwise you’re bound to get ripped off… it’s supposedly like a wholesale market where you see lotza imitation shirts, bags, shoes, wallets, watches, shades, etc. common brands like lv, Gucci, coach, lee, levis, nike, adidas, puma, etc. some of the imitation goods look really fake while others still look quite nice & decent despite the fact that they’re imitation… even though they may not pass off as the real thing, some of the stuff can still be bought for casual use if they’re cheap…
One thing about crowded shopping areas like 七铺路 is that you’ve gotta be real careful of your belongings… William & I bumped into a fellow gip friend, joey, at one of the malls, and he was telling us how he almost got ‘mugged’… apparently, this middle-aged woman probably used a pen-knife or something to cut a slit in his bag, and supposedly tried to unzip his bag while he was not looking, but thank god he felt something, and quickly turned around, only to see that woman suddenly panicking, and scooting off instantly! Gosh… what a close shave… his bag still had that slit, but at least his belongings weren’t stolen… gd for him… *phew*
The other thing about 七铺路 is the large no. of touts there… once they see that you’re a tourist, they’ll crowd around you and keep trying to peddle their imitation products to you… many of them will keep offering to show you their hidden stash, perhaps lead you to a shop upstairs or something… but here’s a word of advice: do NOT follow them under any circumstances… no matter how tempted you may be by the attractive pictures of all the branded stuff they supposedly have in their shop… you never know what kinda 黑店 they might lead you to, or whether it’s some kinda scam where they just wanna take you to a less crowded spot and rob you or something… to be safe, just walk around yourself, do your own shopping at your own leisurely pace, and ignore the touts… don’t worry, the shopping can still be lotza fun! I realized that there’ve been many more shops set up since the last time I came here with my family… =) don’t be intimidated by what I said, coz the bargaining is quite an experience too… =P you really gotta dare to quote a very low starting price, coz the vendors are always more than ready to charge you about 300-500% of the normally acceptable selling price… >_< oh, you can act like you don’t really understand Chinese, as if you’re some ABC, and communicate with them in English or simple Chinese, so that you can just listen to what crap they’re saying to one another without them knowing that you can actually understand them! Hahaha… joey, William & I went around shopping, lamely pretending to be from Australia (it was joey’s idea) and that we couldn’t really speak or understand Chinese… hahaha… when it comes to negotiating the prices, you can always use a calculator or pretend to have some trouble saying the amount in Chinese, along with a fake ABC accent… hahaha… gosh… =P for guys, you may even get a bonus deal… our dearest joey was so affectionate to the shopkeeper, a young girl in her 20s, that he gave her a hug after we were done buying stuff… haha… act angmoh & get a free hug with no strings attached… bet he was over the moon… =P poor William was probably green with envy, but he was probably too timid to try lah… regretting it already? Awww… =P
So anyway, after our shopping, we met up with another gip friend, fuquan, and went for dinner together… the 4 of us wanted to share a cab to 南京西路 (west nanjing rd) for dinner, but it was raining, and we couldn’t get a cab even after waiting for more than half an hr… so we gave up, and went to check out the small shops & restaurants nearby… we eventually settled for some kind of “麻辣spicy yong tau foo”. You basically choose the items (on skewers) that you want, like mushrooms, vege, meat, fishballs, meatballs, etc, put them in a metal tray, pass them to the helper, and tell him what kind of noodles you want… they have粉丝 (vermicelli), maggi mee, and some other types of noodles. The soup base is a bit like 麻辣汤 but not too spicy… it was quite nice actually… simple and cheap meal… =)
麻辣spicy yong tau foo
random pic we took at the train station on our way back...
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