Part of the day spent at Shenzhen today. Didn’t venture too far beyond the Lo Wu shopping mall. This sign shows you that only the finest crap is available there:


Actually, inside, it seems like the hottest items right now are fake iPod Nanos and knock-off Sandisk SD cards.

I was hoping to go for a massage marathon. But then it occured to me that T might not be so comfortable with the experience. So I started to describe it to her in detail, and got no further than “Well, you go to a locker room, take off ALL your clothes, even your underwear, wrap a towel around yourself and go take a shower in a relatively open area.” Well, actually, I don’t know that the womens’ side is like that, but the mens’ side certainly is. And as soon as she heard this, she said no thank you.

So I figured I’d at least go for a foot massage within the shopping mall. At this spot, chosen at random, I had one of the best foot massages of my entire life, one hour for 30 RMB (about US$3.75). This guy knew exactly what he was doing, knew exactly where to put pressure and carefully watched my face each time to make sure he wasn’t going too far. He had a younger guy he was teaching, so it was a bit weird as the teacher would press on one leg and the student would feel around on my other leg for the proper spots! Nevertheless, I felt great after this and gave the guy 50, keep the change, he was well worth it. In typical Lo Wu fashion, I almost couldn’t enjoy the massage because for the first ten minutes I had a steady stream of people asking me if I wanted facial, shoulder massage, manicure, pedicure, start all over again. After tiring of constantly saying “pu yao, xie xie,” I’d just close my eyes and put a finger to my lips every time someone came by. Here’s the master and his student (and yes, that’s my skinny very white foot):


While I relaxed and enjoyed, T ran around the mall on her own, coming back with two pairs of shoes and a blouse. Our shopping together was funny – she knows a fair amount of Cantonese while I’m stronger at Mandarin, so the bargaining was taking place in three languages.

The Lo Wu mall is really oppressive. Shopkeepers stand outside of every shop and yell out their wares to you as you pass by, “Hello sir, missy, you want to buy t shirt, Rolley (sic) watch, bag, pants, pen, painting” not to forget all the people running up to you every second offering pirate DVDs and software. The yelling is bad enough, some of these people poke you to get your attention, a few actually grab you. On the other hand, the next time I need any bedsheets or towels, I think I’ll go here instead of Sogo or Wing On.

I much prefer the shopping malls around Dongmen, which is where Shenzhen residents shop – LoWu is for tourists and Hongkies. It’s quite telling that something like 90% of the Born to Shop Shenzhen book only covers Lo Wu. And this past Friday SCMP ran a single page guide to Shenzhen that aside from Lo Wu only mentioned the artists village – not even a line on the tacky theme parks near Overseas Chinese Town (the area itself is quite beautiful actually) or the mini-Wanchai over in the Shekou area.

The thing about Dongmen is that you don’t have to put up with the relentless touts, there’s a much wider choice of cheaper food and the shops only mark things up 100% instead of 300%.

Dongmen is just a 10 minute 1 yuan busride away (not sure if the new subway goes there or not) but sometimes I confess I’m just too lazy to go that one extra mile.

I almost forgot that HK now has vanity license plates, so my first spotting of one kind of caught me offguard. Here ’tis:


Last note, one of the DVDs I special ordered this week was Saturday Night Live – Best of Saturday TV Funhouse. These are short animations created for SNL by Robert Smigel, the guy behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, with co-writers including Stephen Colbert and Louis CK. Some of this stuff is great, like this clip which is also on Youtube, the “trailer” for “Bambi 2002.” “Walt Disney’s Bambi is going into the vault for 10 years, depriving your child or future children of a significant emotional milestone…”

Hongkie Town
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