Hua Qiang Bei

In Chinese, 华强北. This past weekend Ben and I went shopping with some coworkers: Annie, Carol, and Melissa. Annie is the school librarian, and Carol and Melissa are English teachers. It was nice going shopping with Chinese women; they are familiar with good places to go, and as women they can give me advice about clothes. Secretly, I wanted them to help me find a Halloween costume. This year I'm going as a Chinese woman, but I wasn't going to tell them that. I ended up buying this pretty, dark purple dress. It's Chinese, but still fashionable. I have seen some strange patterns and designs for dresses here. I wanted to buy something Chinese that I would wear more than once. The Chinese teachers really liked shopping in the malls, while Ben and I were content to walk around the cheap market behind one of the malls. Some of the goods in this market were not knockoffs; they were clothes that fell off the back of a truck. Real Western name brands with Chinese prices! Fantastic. I bought a pair of Converse All Stars for less than $20. Converse is very popular here, so I may have a small collection before my teaching year is out. ^_^