Week 4
Day 4

The last outing with the tour guides. It was nice being led by them as they were fun to be with and they were really friendly. They brought us to the longest shopping street in the world which is called Yan Jiang Da Dao. It is 7 kilometres long and is filled with many world-wide brands shops.

It was raining quite heavily when we reached there and the weather, really cold, around 12 degrees or less. We had 2 umbrellas for our 4 people group, so our movement under the rain was really slow. We visited the many shops that were selling sports items. We visited a few shops like Adidas, Nike, the shop that sells American leather wallets and belts, and many other interesting shops. Sasi went on a shopping frantic and bought many things! They are a blouse, jacket, wallet, etc. Hwee ping and I got a shirt each. My first time getting a pink shirt! Satish got 2 shirts, wallet and belt. He made me the model to gauge the size of the shirt he should get by making me try out the shirts. Along the way, Sasi’s umbrella went missing as whenever we enter a shop, we had to put our umbrellas outside. Luckily mine was still there, so I could still shelter them. Long the whole 7 kilometers path, there were quite a number of people that were holding a brochure or just loitering about. They are the people that the tour guides warned us about. They ask people to follow them to the alleys where they sold fake shoes and watches. We did not follow them, but we were constantly pestered by them. We took lunch at Macdonald, and then carried on with our shopping trip.

It was around 3 when we got back to the meeting point. We went to the nearby toilet and guess what we saw? The toilet’s windows were open and the guys standing cubicle could easily be seen. The doors of the toilets could not be locked, even the girl’s toilet, heard from them that they saw 2 ladies in the toilet without the door closed. The toilet conditions here in china still has not improved much over the years. We went back to school afterwards where along the way, more than 3 quarter of the whole group left to shop at the area at Yellow Crane Tower.

I washed the clothes and met the rest of the group for dinner afterwards, where our same routine was carried out. The only difference is that we went to the bookstore in the supermarket beside the KFC and got a Chinese to English dictionary for our China friend, Tom. We went back to the service apartment to complete our assignments and journal.

The people of China are very innovative, but to my inference, is because of survival instincts. The people who carried brochures and tried to get ask to buy their fake goods created this method of doing business. It really a sight that I have never seen before and there are many more of these kinds of methods, highly unusual, but very creative.