Shanghai Markets

This market just around the corner from Jen & Taylor's apartment is selling live fish. And just about everything else too.

The long poles against the truck are sugar cane.

Taylor and Jen at the "Wet Market" a few blocks in the other direction. This building had fruits, vegetables, meat and fish and was inside more like a store. Many of the other markets had booth-like areas right on the street.

This booth sold comforters filled with pulled silk. Ahh nice!!!

Live poultry sat dutifully in and out of these cages. When you pick your bird, they dip it in boiling water and then spin the feathers off in that round, metal thing mid-left. After they remove the feathers, they will cut it up for you if you like. We think that the people live in the little buildings behind their market space. When you look in the doorways, the spaces are narrow and dark and you can sometimes see a bed or a hotplate for cooking.

Watch out. Here's the egg delivery man.

Jen is able to negotiate a good price for her fruit and vegetables. We were very impressed by how well she communicates with the Chinese marketers and her maid and driver.

Pig's feet anyone?

A lot of the vegetables looked familiar but quite a few were new to us. The purple skinny stuff is eggplant. Vegetables and rice are the mainstay of their diet. They eat it three times a day. For variety they have noodles in soup. They add tiny pieces of meat or fish to their vegetables. The only substantial pieces of meat we ate were the upper or lower part of chicken wings.

Anyone need a ride? This looks like a modern rickshaw. Old, rusty looking bicycles are a significant mode of transport. Jen's maid rides her bike about an hour each way to work for them for 5 hours. I didn't see her bike but I saw hundreds of others. Not one of them looked like it was even 5 years new.

Taylor and Jen at the "Pearl Market". There were dozens of jewelry booths on this one floor of a multi-story market. Taylor has developed a relationship with a few of the vendors. They know that if they give him a fair deal, he will bring other visitors to their booth in the future. This is mutually beneficial and saves a lot of needless haggling with every booth. It also insures better quality. They will put the necklaces together using your choice of clasps, length of strand, etc. while you wait.

This Chinese market was very busy even on a weekday morning. It was a holiday week, however. They loved this Haagen-Dazs. On this particular morning, we got trapped in human gridlock at one intersection. Steve didn't like that much. The Chinese don't know about personal space. They are just used to being in crowds.

This upper end market downtown near Taylor's work was very crowded with both foreigners and nationals. We just walked down the street and back and didn't even go into the stores. These were real stores. There was an NBA store. They love basketball. This was a mall similar to Gateway. We went into one store that sold Chinese "treats" so it would be like our candy store. It was long and narrow and crowded and had strange looking stuff. They don't eat much of anything that is sweet. We just walked through but couldn't find a single thing that looked appetizing.

The first thing we did in China was go to the fabric market where Steve and Taylor ordered suits. The fully lined suits were $60 each after Taylor's skilled negotiations. The custom shirts were $11. Taylor is able to get silk ties for $1.50. Steve laughs when he puts on his ties because they make them so short. You have to be good at tying your Chinese tie.

This was an old style Chinese tea house. There were too many people surrounding it to get any closer for further inspection so we just kept walking. Some things just weren't worth battling the crowds.