Hello Lady! Lady!

Crossed over into Shenzhen today. About a 45 minute train ride to Lo Wu (or is it Wo Lu?) where the border crossing is. Crossing was a piece of cake...no lines, no big crowds, unlike what I've heard. O'Hare is worse. Cabbed it from Lo Wu to the hotel, which gave me a good overview of the city. It's more sprawling than I imagined...dozens of high-rise apartment buildings that ranged from ramshackle to palacial. I was expecting Eastern Bloc kind of industrial ugliness, but it actually looks a lot like Miami. Everything is clean, lots of pretty landscaping, and it doesn't hurt that it's a gorgeous day (just don't look at the horizon, where that blue sky turns gray with pollution). The Marco Polo is lovely.

My Room

Props to Brian for booking us on club floors - still quite a bargain though!

The experience of the day was shopping at the mall in Lo Wu. Brian had warned me about getting pestered by salespeople, but even he was surprised at how we were accosted. Holy mackerel, it was like hundreds of mosquitoes...if you stopped for a second they were all over you: "Hey Lady! Sunglasses? Gucci Bag? DVD? Manicure?" I was very nervous and nearly lost it when a group of 5 teenage boys basically surrounded us and started grabbing us. We hung in there though, and learned to answer all comers with a smile and a "No Thanks," "Just Looking," and the winner: "Sorry no more money." So Mom, the next time we're accosted at Woodfield, I'm not even going to sweat it.

Commercial City in LoWu - For all your Pirated DVD and Designer Knockoff needs...

This is not to say that I wasn't sucked in. Back at the Christmas party Brian was showing off his tux, made to order at the mall for about $100. So he wanted to visit the tailor who made it (Tony the Tailor...look him up if you're ever here) to make up a sportsjacket. Tony asked if I was interested in anything and showed me a book full of ripped magazine pages loaded with images of designer clothes. Very intriguing...you mean I can have a designer coat/pants/whatever, made in *MY* size...cheap? So yeah I had to do it. He's making me a silk jacket (Jackie-O style) and two pairs of pants and delivering them to my hotel Thursday. I'll keep you posted on how that turns out. If it does, the next time I come back I'm bringing my measurements, a copy of Vogue, and my life savings.

So I dropped a few more bucks on a designer knock-off bag and wallet. This will be IT for shopping for me. It's probably the only chance we would have had to do it in Shenzhen anyway so I'm glad we fit it in. I was also glad to go with Brian...he knows the lay of the land pretty well, likes to shop, and bargains like nobody's business. He'd go up to other Americans and say "Watch? DVD?" just to see the looks on their faces, and then they'd laugh. You could tell from their nervous expressions that they were as shell-shocked as I was.

Also had my first real Chinese meal, but played it safe. Fried rice with ham and shrimp. My stomach's a little gurgly so hopefully there won't be any major ramificaitons to that. Suffice it to say I'm happy our hotel is across the street from the office...I can come back here in an, um, emergency.