January 12, 2007

Before we left Beijing, we wanted to do some bargain shopping, so Jeff, Caleb, Ben and I headed out this evening to a market that used to be an open air market but has converted to stalls inside a multilevel department store type building. Simon, our guide, wrote out the directions in Chinese for our taxi driver, and we left Micheline in the care of Taylor and Alyssa back at the hotel. Alyssa is still quite sick, and Taylor said he has had enough of being a tourist, so he consented to stay at the hotel and read while Alyssa slept.

Our taxi driver dumped us out on a corner, pointing in the general direction of a tall building. Not reading Chinese, we weren't sure if we were going to the right place, but when we entered, we felt like we had entered a huge flea market. Signs above the escalators guided you to which products were on each floor. Ben was on a mission for something for which he has pleaded for months...Heelys.

Connected to his deafness, Ben has pretty weak balance, and I hadn't wanted to pay 70 or 80 dollars in the U.S. for Heelys only for him to discover that they weren't much fun after all. Enter the glory of the Beijing market....fake Heelys at a fraction of the price.

After getting directions to the shoe floor, we headed downstairs only to be practically accosted by the vendors. We told people at one of the first booths we came to that we wanted Heelys and even though they didn't have them, they ran somewhere, coming back with a few boxes.

If you think the vendors at the Great Wall are aggressive, you haven't seen anything until you have walked the aisles of this market. "Hey lady" abounds as well as "You need silk jacket?", "Come try my clothes", "Beautiful silk tablecloths for you", and "Come see my beautiful pearls." Of course all of these are accompanied by "I have special price just for you!"



Already having pearls and silk clothes, we mostly wanted to get the boys their shoes and then look around for a few minutes and leave. Ben decided on some shoes that were like Heelys with only one wheel in the heel, but Caleb decided he wanted some cheap, plastic-y Spiderman ones that had four metal wheels that popped up and down. His wheels were reminiscent of the metal wheels I had on roller skates as a child. Never mind that I feared these shoes would make his feet stink...there was no convincing him that anything other than Spiderman would do.