Hanging With Li Bin Hui

Last night, we were at Soho, and Li Bin Hui told me he was free the next day, so we made plans to meet today. As I stood at the meeting place, I happened to spot Chris, so I hijacked him as well. So when Li Bin Hui and I met up, we all went to HL-Mart, which is a supermarket, and Chris bought a few groceries. We then headed back to Chris' place and Chris made us some sandwiches. Afterwards, Chris and I took Li Bin Hui out to a giant market, consisting of several giant buildings, all filled with hundreds of little shops selling all sorts of random crap.

Li Bin Hui knew the place, I had never been there before, and before long, Alex called us to meet up with us because she was bored. We had to get Li Bin Hui on my phone, talking to some random Chinese guy on Alex's phone, just so we could find her. The place was that huge. We shopped around quite a bit, and kidded with Li Bin Hui a lot. He seemed to have the idea that he had to help us as much as he could, despite our insistence that he just relax. He kept taking over any haggling with the shopkeepers which kind of sucked, because I don't bother with their cultural habit of "saving face", so I think I could've gotten a better price for some things. However, he was incredibly helpful with a lot of it.

All in all, we all picked up a few things. Chris got a remote control helicopter, and while we were at that shop, I saw the same one I have for only 150 yuan. I was so frustrated, because that's only about 20 bucks CAD, and I know my parents got me mine for far more. On a side note, Chris ended up breaking his propellors within the day. Oh well. Anyway, Alex finally got speakers. She had been looking for cheap speakers since we got here, and never found a price she liked. She finally found some for 25 yuan.

I picked up Majiang (finally!), and this is where I really owe Li Bin Hui. The guy offered it to me for 150, which was right out. I wasn't going to spend anywhere near this. Li Bin Hui chatted a bit with him, and suddenly the price was 80, and I got him down to 70. If I had been on my own, I wouldn't have gotten it nearly as cheap, so I owe him big for this one. We never did find a good price on dice though (China for me is all about the gambling/drinking games), so I'll keep looking.

Finally, the one thing I really prized, even though I know I spent too much on it, was a shot glass stand. China doesn't really have shot glasses, they're all clear, with no labels at all, and they're few and far between at best. I got two from Soho, thanks to Li Bin Hui and Andy (Alex's bartender), but that's it. This stand came out of nowhere. I was really excited. It's a large plexiglass wheel, and it has two levels of holes to hold shot glasses on. It spins, so you can pull out shot glasses from either of the two levels, from any direction. I love it, and I know I got ripped off, but they wouldn't budge in the least! They wanted 150 yuan for the whole thing (plus a full rack of shot glasses), but the shot glasses were all just typical glass shot glasses, so I asked how much for just the stand. I ended up paying 80 or 90 yuan for it. I know full out that it's not worth that much, but I couldn't find it anywhere else, and I've never seen it anywhere in Canada or China, so I consider it worth the extra cash. I expect it to be a big hit at the next party we have back in Canada.

Afterwards, Alex, Li Bin Hui and I all went back to my place to drop off the stuff (Majiang weighed about 20 pounds!), and we took him to Mario World - an arcade. None of us seemed terribly into it, and I even walked away from a game that was still going. I suspect we were all just too tired to make anything of it. We left after killing about 10 yuan between the 3 of us, and walked Li Bin Hui to the bus stop.

As we left, we said goodbye to Li Bin Hui, and I shook his hand with the bus far in my palm to pass it off to him, but he spotted it. So we wrestled for a bit, trying to leave the other person's palm up so they would have the cash. It was only two yuan, but Li Bin Hui had insisted on paying bus fare for Chris and I earlier, so I wanted to get him back. After a bit of wrestling, I got him to give up, and Alex and I took off to sleep. The shopping had easily exhausted us.