Tailoring Suits

Finally, I had the opportunity to take a Chinese person to what we call Fabric Land (a pun, based on the Canadian company). Hou Xixi, a street not far from where I live, is dedicated to clothing, and the end of the street is made up of several shops that will sell cloth or tailor clothing for you. Since coming to China, I knew I wanted to have some suits made, but I never had a Chinese friend with the time to come with me and help me buy some. I probably could have muddled through it, but I would have paid a lot more, and probably not have known how much cloth to buy.

We had Alex's friend, Apple, who is a student at Hy-Lite (Jessica's job - the English School) come with us. She was great, because not only did she help interpret, but when the tailoring work turned out to be a lot more expensive than I expected, she called her mother. Apple's only 18, so she didn't know quite how much it should cost, but we were getting prices of about 250-300 yuan per suit! I expected around 100 yuan! Apple, now armed with the knowledge her mom gave her, managed to talk it down so I was paying total 560 yuan for all three suits, including the pants, and all adjustments. Basically, when all is said and done, I've gotten each suit for around 35 bucks Canadian. However, now, I'm quite broke, and these last few days in China are going to be tight.

Afterwards, I had Apple pick out a bunch of popular Chinese movies for me, as I've become quite discouraged with buying Western movies here. I can burn American movies on my own back home, and they'd be better quality, but Chinese movies are not something I have realistic access to. Not to mention, these will have subtitles, so I can continue to listen and learn Mandarin, and if I don't understand, I can read the subtitles.

Apple also came back to our apartment and taught me the basics of Majiang, the popular Chinese gambling game. I still don't know how to play, but she explained all the types and meanings of the pieces. Apparently, I'm going to have to learn some more Chinese characters. Hopefully, Tommy will teach me when I get back to Canada.