Beijing, Shop 'till you drop

Aren’t these two so much fun!!!

We didn’t have any structured activities today so we spent a lot of the day wandering. Our first stop was the shard box store. During the cultural revolution (1966-1976) the red guards set out to destroy anything that smacked of history, wealth, or prominence. Among other things, they would go into homes smashing porcelain pottery. Many families, not wanting to be labeled as traitorous, would break any pottery they had. So many items of cultural and historical significance were destroyed at this time. After the revolution some people collected the remaining shards of pottery. They took the broken shard, and wrapped silver around the edges, making it into a jewelry box.

I first saw these shard boxes when I lived in Hong Kong around 1994. I found the box, a metaphor for the Chinese people and their resiliency. Their life has been shattered and broken so many times, yet they seem to take the broken pieces and create something new and beautiful. No it’s not the life of wholeness that it once was, but none the less they move forward and even do so with joy and optimism and courage. So I had wanted to buy one of these boxes while here in Beijing. The one I chose has the double happiness character. Happiness shattered, but refit; wrapped in silver, shaped to something new, but still in the end ‘double happiness’.

We went to a place called the Silk Market. Beijing constantly amazes us. 20 years ago there were hardly any shops except the state fun ‘friendship stores’. Service was pathetic if existent at all. At the silk market was 7 floors of shops, all privately owned. Shop owners would call for us to come look at their goods, bargaining vigorously and competitively. Nicole found a sweatshirt (Abercrombie and Fitch) that started out at $60U.S. Derek fought hard, even walking away twice, but bought the sweatshirt for $13. The kids had so much fun just walking through the shops and watching us bargain. But it’s NOT capitalism. Deng Xiao Ping made a famous statement when he received criticism that his economic reforms looked like capitalism. “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice! Well, let’s just say that many mice are being caught in the new economic reforms which have swept China.