One can only walk around the West Lake so many times before it starts to lose its glimmer, so I spent this Sunday doing some window shopping (and I ended up doing some actual shopping too) at Hangzhou's many, many, many stores. I must have checked at least three dozen stores, but I ended up only liking three: one Spanish, one British and one Chinese retailer. My original plan was to do reconnaissance for a shopping trip after I get my next paycheck, but I ended up buying a jacket at Zara (the Spanish store) because I was worried it would be cycled out before I returned (a concern legitimized by the changes in their store since I had visited the previous week). I was a little disappointed that there was so few clothes I enjoyed at Chinese stores; the only one I intend to buy is a pair of jeans at Jasonwood. The issue I had with Chinese styles were that they were so garish that I could never see myself actually wearing the clothing. It seemed that Chinese retailers didn't see any t-shirt that didn't have a huge graphic (usually of a Transformer or cartoon character) or any button up shirt that was made entirely from the same fabric (most shirts were a combination of solids, stripes and plaids). I talked to my friend Ricardo about it and we came to the belief that these were fashionable because they provided a way for Chinese people to stand out within the huge sea of people that is China. I'm starting to notice that a lot of my theories about China go back to the concept of Chinese people trying to differentiate themselves in such a large country.
 | These tri-color jeans were probably the single most ridiculous thing we saw on Sunday. I debated buying them for the sheer joke quality, but gawked at the price they wanted for these crimes against cotton |
I don't know why, but it seems that Ricardo and I bring out the American in each other. We ended up eating at Pizza Hut and McDonalds today. McDonalds was more or less the same as it is in America (except the portion sizes are a step lower: American medium = Chinese large), Pizza Hut was something else. Pizza Hut is apparently fine dining in China. They have a rather large menu, most of which isn't pizza, although the pizza is a pretty good analogue of American pizza. In the interest of embracing cultural fusion, we ordered the Black Pepper Beef Pizza, which ended up being pretty much exactly what we had imagined Chinese-fusion pizza to be like.
After our culinary adventures, we went on a hunt for contact lens solution for Ricardo (making me thankful, once again, for having good vision). We tried 2 different hypermarkets (because supermarkets apparently aren't good enough), but were ultimately unsuccessful. We tried to watch a movie, but the theater Ricardo picked ended up having only Chinese movies and only one with English dubbing (and it happened to be on the far west side of the city, about 15km from central Hangzhou). We opted to do a bit more window shopping before calling it an early day and heading home.
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| Pizza Hut is fancy in China. People actually come here on dates. We sure are a long way from Deming, NM | WW2 Special Edition PBR. I didn't know whether to feel shame, rage or pity. |
August 9
Not much interesting happened today. I went to work and finished the tool spindle speed/feedrate index I was making after it got to 1200 listings. I talked to my mentor and he said that would be more than enough. Tomorrow I'm supposed to work on some more AutoCAD stuff.
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