the day i put a SERIOUS dent in my [new] wallet...

Thursday morning (the dreaded 'morning after...') we woke up at 7:30 (YES! unbelievable) to go visit a goddamned Coca Cola Factory. Which I suppose would have been a lot cooler if I wasn't as desperately hungover. It was actually pretty interesting and cool looking and I suppose I just realized how big of a deal Coke is here. Especially with the Olympics coming up and such.






it's like Willie Wonka's goddamned chocolate factory..








After that, Anna, Jennifer and I went shopping at what we THOUGHT was QipuLu. We sort of just trusted the taxi driver to drop us off and when we departed he mumbled something that was clearly important but indiscernable. Maybe we should have made a greater effort to have figured it out. As soon as we left the taxi we were chased by RELENTLESS man shouting 'WANT WATCH, BAG, WATCHES, SHOES, BAGS.' It was actually kind of ridiculous, the extent of the chasing. So we escaped into the nearest building which turned out to be stalls of really cheap clothes. Some might know this place as Heaven. I picked up some sweet stuff, but i have to admit the place was super sketchy. At every turn would be shopkeepers yelling for us to COME INto their creepy stalls and freaky women would invade our personal bubbles and try to pull us to get our hair and nails done. This place was friggin weird I say. And finally when we reached the third floor, we hit the motherload. KNOCKOFFS! yessss. First it was just shoes and I asked about a specific Chanel pair to which the shopkeeper asked if I could "wait 10 minutes". I really had nothing else to do so I obliged. In the meanwhile, my friend had wandered off and the next thing I know, another shopkeeper is pulling me into the store next door - Kimonos. "No Kimonos" I try and protest but she opens a secret door BEHIND THE kimonos. OH MAN. OH MAN! rows and rows and shelves of lighted up racks containing all sorts of Guccis, Pradas, Miu Mius and Louis Vuittons. All of course ridiculously overpriced but I was able to whittle down my new Fendi spybag from 780 to 200 yuan (about 25 bucks) and my friend's Guccis and Chanels. I swear word had spread because all of a sudden, EVERY STALL we went to had a secret backdoor. It felt so illegal and surreal, I'm DEF going back.


[I got yelled at for taking this picture!]

Anyways, a couple hours later, we were probably some of the happiest (albeit a little bit poorer) girls in all of China.


Turns out that the building we were in was only ONE of many buildings. QipuLu is not a street but like a 4 block radius FILLED with similar buildings of similar cheap clothes. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better...