Let me start off by commenting that Chairman Mao is everywhere!  I started this blog with the intention of writing about Chinese money–which I’ll get to–but aside from his face being on every paper currency bill, we had another odd Mao encounter today.  I’m sure that someone will write about this later, because it deserves its own blog, but today our group visited the Nanjing Massacre Museum.  This was one of the most powerful and touching places I’ve ever been to in my entire life.

At the end of a brilliantly-constructed museum that I think everyone should see at some point in their lifetime, there’s a little gift shop with all sorts of Mao memorabilia.  The Nanjing Massacre Museum focuses on the tragic events surrounding the Japanese invasion of Nanking (modern Nanjing) in 1937, and the deaths of over 300,000 people over the following six weeks.  The Museum also offers a historical account of various Japanese invasions of China between the mid-19th century and 1945 (end of World War II).

… so why was Mao in a gift shop for events that he had absolutely nothing to do with??  It would be like putting little statues of Ronald Reagan in a Civil War museum.  Odd…

So yesterday was a shopping day.  I like to shop.  There’s something invigorating about going shopping, and making a day out of it.  Especially when it’s in a city, and you can walk around various neighborhoods and admire architecture and city life in-between entering boutiques.  A small group of us along with our Chinese classmate Ricky and his sister (her name is pronounced Meow Meow, like a cat) went to a few major shopping districts in Nanjing.  Daneen and I were the troopers… we lasted from 1pm to 10pm.  Pfft, that’s nothin’.

It’s amazing what you can find in China, and how frugal the currency difference can make you!  I would often catch myself being disgusted by a price tag on a pair of jeans that read about 140 yuan, before realizing that I get to divide by 7 to equal $20 American dollars.  And still, even with that math in mind, I’ve still been increasingly frugal in my spending.  I guess that’s a good thing, since all these bills with Mao on them can tend to feel like Monopoly money, especially with the exchange rate.

In Nanjing you can find all the bigs brands, the knock-offs, the European clothing you’ve never heard of and the foreign high-end boutiques that you see in magazines but never in real life.  We found a 6-story mall that looks like the area of King of Prussia mall where Tiffany & Co. is located.  There was a Korean brand called G-Star Raw and some brand called Odbo that I’ve never heard of, both with some amazing clothing (www.g-star.com; & www.odbo.com says “coming soon”).

By the way, I learned quickly that in that mall you don’t divide by 7.  You take an American price and you multiply by 7.  Some of the numbers will make your head spin.  A couple of us went into Versace just to see if all the numbers would fit on a price tag.  They did.

Elsewhere in Nanjing we found a place called Hunan Road that looked like a Chinese Las Vegas.  The streets were lined with clothing stores that I’ve never heard of.  By the way, Chinese sizes are a little intimidating.  I’m a small in America and a large over here.

We found authentic Diesel jeans, cool sweaters with Chinese characters on them, and I even had a crazy experience in a clearance/wholesale boutique where the clerk tore apart the store to try and sell me Gucci sneakers.  When we couldn’t find my size, she tried to act out the concept of me ordering the sneakers and them being shipped from Italy.  This charades act was complete with airplane noises, typing clicks, and other strange & fascinating sounds.

In one Chinese boutique store that sold t-shirts and jeans, the three female employees kept pulling on Daneen’s hair to see if it was real.  I guess these three girls had never seen someone of African descent before!

We finished our shopping day in a DVD store, where I picked up five foreign films and a DVD carrying case for a total of about 65 yuan (close to $10).  I parted with a lot of Mao’s yesterday.  There’s nothing quite like shopping in China.

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