Junk Market

After the delicious dim sum brunch, we headed down toward YuYuan Gardens where the junk market is. I showed photos of my first experience here, and it was so wild I had to bring the family back. Even MORE crowded on the week end, if that is possible. Storey was in heaven and found several things, stickers, etc., that she bargained hard for. Ridley was loving all the office supply booths as well as household supply vendors. A little bit of everything here. I caught him hanging out in front of this booth....In all fairness, he didn't know he was standing in front of these lovlies. Just trying to stay out of the way of the elbows! The girls wanted to buy little goldfish that we had found at Yu Gardens when there before, so we were on a hunt for fish bowls of any kind. The little goldfish, if they are even goldfish, are about 1.5 cm, if even, and come in little plastic key chain pouches. The vendor says they live for 6 months in the pouch - no food, just whatever kind of water they put them in. That was not going to work for us! We needed to transfer them to real homes. After finding the necessary bowls, colored rocks, plastic plants, we headed out of the junk market to cross over to YuYuan, but in the midst of all the street vendors, we came across a man selling the fish key chains from a cardboard box for 2 yuan each - 2 fish in each key chain. As we were looking at the key chains and deciding, the vendor suddenly grabbed his box with all the fish sliding around on the top and bulldozed past me and the crowd heading into the store. Paige had been holding a key chain, and one fell to the ground that I picked up. Several people around all of a sudden spoke English and were saying, "free, free, you take, yours." We were left holding these keychains with no where to hand them off. A man, who was obviously a plain clothed policeman, came and shooed us away, so off we went with our new fish! It was quite exciting. The vendor must not have had a license to be selling these. We kept laughing at how quickly he disappeared, and wondered how he knew the policeman was coming.
Later Sunday afternoon we headed over to the Honqiao Marriott where the Middle School choir was singing for a tree lighting ceremony. Many of Paige's friends are in the choir. With wonderful Chinese flair, a Santa, lit with sparklers, flew across the lobby, dropping sparklers everywhere as he went, and lit a very large explosion of sparklers on the other side of the lobby. Don't know if there are any safety standards for these kinds of things, here. Sure makes it fun, though!
We have been trying to get our livingroom furniture recovered, so Ridley and I finally made an appointment and hopped a taxi to the far outer reaches of Shanghai to one of many warehouse districts, this one more of a furniture and design area. We walked into a building under construction on the bottom two floors, and then came in to this area where women were all busy sewing upholstery.
This larger room is where the fabric was being attached to the furniture which we saw being made on another floor. Everything right here. Anything you want, they can make. Ridley and I went into another room to find the fabric we wanted. We went through countless books trying to find fabric that was in stock so we could have them made quickly - 10 days. After many changes we decided upon some fun, wild aubergine, red, gray and green mixed. Sounds interesting, huh? Don't worry. The next day our gal called to say that, in fact, that fabric was no longer available! Uggg. The warehouse is so far out there we are not interested in going back out, even though they have our furniture slip covers. We found a store they work with around the corner from here, so there is another fabric expedition planned for later this morning! Because she had promised us we had chosen available fabric, she has now said that they will make the slip covers in 4 days, once they get the fabric. WOW! 4 days. We'll see.