Shopping in China

During our day off, we were able to walk around close to our hotel.  While exploring we stumbled upon a shopping mall and grocery store.  We decided it would be interesting to check out these places even though not a traditional tourist location we thought it would be very interesting to see and explore the culture.

The grocery store was similar to a Walmart, and was located next to our hotel, it was two levels.  The store was busy and to enter we walked up an incline to reach the house goods section-paper products, some clothing, and electronics.  We walked around glancing at various items, and it was neat to see the variety or products of some American brands with Chinese characters-similar in logos you could identify exactly what the item was, now that's good marketing! Downstairs was the grocery section, the butcher area was extremely interesting  with whole hogs hanging from the ceiling! We walked around looking and taking photos, the locals thought we were crazy.

Next, the shopping mall.  This was located across the street from our hotel, it was four floors and very different than our American malls, it was more like a department store with different departments except the departments were actual separate stores.  It was very open and seemed the stores were the same but it became apparent they were different once seeing how many associates were located in each area.  As we walked around we began to notice the different stores had a register and logos from previous stores.  The clothing stores were very cute and I was really impressed with the clothing styles being very different from current US styles, but nothing like I would have imagined-I'm not very fashion forward, but I would describe the styles as European, as the woman's clothes were very dainty with lace and pretty appliques.  There were some familiar stores like the Northface, Adidas, and Columbia   Each floor had a designated purpose and we found the forth floor was the children's section, and it was hard to hold ourselves back from buying Lottie more clothes and some Chinese speaking toys, but for now, until we donate the orphanage gifts, our bags are stuffed!

It was such a neat experience to see the Chinese culture firsthand and see some day to day activities and local shopping places.