One of a Kind...Kind Of

When Macklemore's song Thrift Shop  became a sensational hit there was a wonder if it helped thrift stores increase sales. There actually was not in increase of sales and store owners stated that traffic was about the same in America. What about other countries like China? To my surprise, there are actually no thrift stores in China! What I found instead were "One of a Kind Shops."

These shops are mostly littered in shopping districts and they are small. The biggest one I have been in is maybe 15 feet by 10 feet (4.5 meters by 3 meters) but mostly they are 6 feet by 7 feet (1.8 meter by 2 meters). All of the stores advertise themselves as a one-of-a-kind shop and because of that the clothes are really expensive. Kid you not, they are about the same price as shopping in the mall. 

The first time I went shopping with a local Chinese person to these stores I was taken back when we were checking out and she was able to get the price down from 300 RMB for an outfit to about 150 RMB. When we left the store I asked how she could do that, all the clothes had price tags on them after all. She told me that all of the clothes are second-hand and the price tag was merely the starting bid for the clothes. This entire time I was paying full price for these clothes when they were second-hand!

I had two thoughts about these stores. 

First, I felt stupid for not realizing that these were overpriced thrift stores. The picture above is a real one-of-a-kind store and you can see that these aren't super fancy clothes. There is a sweater vest for Pete's Sake! I did notice that a lot of the clothes had English on them and somehow these stores were able to get these second-hand t-shirts and sweaters from western countries and sell them for 3 times as much in their stores. It explains why Looney Toon sweaters, which were big in the 90s and 00s in America, are now popular here. American thrift stores are selling their unwanted and unsaleable stuff to China. 

Second, the stores actively advertise themselves as these luxury brands and often point out, "If you don't buy it here, you won't find it anywhere else!" That is true. Go to any Goodwill in America, can you find the same exact t-shirt, sweater, shorts, or dress in that Goodwill? In one way I feel amazed that is how Chinese people are able to make a lot more money but at the same time feel like I'm being scammed. 

Macklemore's Thrift Shop song talks about how he can go in with $20 and come out with a cart full of stuff. You try the same thing in a Chinese thrift shop, you probably could come out with one t-shirt

Now that's what I called getting tricked by a business. 

Full of Crap

While living in China I thought that overtime I would get accustomed to all the different cultural aspects of living here. After living here for over a year there are things that I am used to such as the clothes, attitudes, and high-pressure salespeople but one thing I am not used to are squat toilets. 
If you want to learn about using a squat toilet then Monkey Abroad has a great video. There is even more to this than I realized and I have a lot of emotions about it as a foreigner here.

First, most bathrooms in China do not have toilet paper or soap available. This includes more public places like malls and parks and privately owned places like restaurants. I made myself a "bathroom bag" which is a zip-lock bag that has tissues and hand sanitizer. If you ever move to China, bring this with you at ALL TIMES. Even airports in China don't always have soap and t.p. I find it intensely disgusting and every time I use a bathroom here I always think about how dirty the doors, chairs, and elevator buttons are outside of those bathrooms. This is also why I only eat street food that have been prepared with tools and not with hands.

Second, not everyone can "aim" correctly. Recall any rest area bathroom in the USA. Got it pictured? It's gross right? That is cleanliness level of every bathroom in China. The walls but mostly the floors are covered in you know what. Children and elderly people have the hardest time using squat toilets and only recently has there been an initiative to place western toilets in bathrooms as the solution to the problem. Usually the western toilet is labeled as the toilet to use if you have a disability and the others are still squat toilets. Sadly, children, the elderly, and even the drunk will fall in the squat toilet once in a while. 

Please lord do not let that happen to me.

This is gross for me on two levels. One, the bottom of my shoes are that much more gross. I do have a hypothesis that is why taking your shoes off while in a house got started. Two, if you have to bring a suitcase with you into the bathroom then you are making the wheels or bottom of those bags so much more gross. 

Third, toilet paper can't be flushed but instead has to be thrown away. That means the bathrooms smell *a certain way* all the time.  

Fourth, China doesn't have indoor plumbing everywhere. I don't mean just at sports events where you have to use a port-a-potty I am talking businesses, parks, and rest areas. Only on my Huangshan trip did I find out about this. If there isn't a way to flush down the waste that means that the bathrooms are done in a trough style. 

The trough toilet AKA trench toilet looks like this. When you go to a trough bathroom, the outside looks normal because there are still stalls. When you open the stall and look down then you see this steel monstrosity. You may notice that there is one hole for the entire bathroom. 
Think about that for a second and what that means.
Yes, while you do your "business" you can unfortunately see everyone else's sliding past you. 
I don't know how often the cleaning staff comes in but I do know they grab buckets of water and pour it down the ends to get everything in the drain. 
I am not saying that many Chinese people are used to this. These trough bathrooms really aren't that common, the Huangshan to Jiaxing rest area was my first time seeing one but it was harrowing.

Now, it's story time. I mentioned in my Huangshan blog post that I had a crazy experience in the rest areas. Well, here it goes. 
The group I was with stopped at a rest area to get drinks and snacks and use the bathrooms. When I headed to the bathrooms I was warned that they were very unclean and I thought, "You mean the normal unclean bathroom. I'm used to it!" 
Spoiler: I was not. 
The first bathroom stall was being used, the second didn't have a door, and the third while having a door had something far worse. Door number three had a pile of crap about shin high on my leg. 

Tommy Boy. 1995

Naturally I went to door two but just then a woman walked in, she strolled to door three made a quick turn around, and then while I was ruffling through my purse for my bathroom bag (hadn't started anything) she locked eyes with me. She didn't turn away. She didn't feel shy or ashamed about locking eyes with a stranger who was about to get their business started. It was like locking eyes with the devil asking me with her look, "Do you dare go while I stare into your soul?" There was no turning around and facing the other way because of the drain situation of the squat toilet. Just then a child with her mom came into the bathroom crying over and over how bad she had to go. They rushed to door three, saw the mess, and then the child turned towards me screaming and crying. 
Having and audience of three with one yelling at me to hurry up was too much. I got out of there and decided to wait. 

The second rest area was the trough bathroom. I didn't realize it was a trough bathroom at first until I opened the door. The girls in line behind me literally gasped when we all saw the steel trough before us. They began debating if they really had to go that bad. Since this was my second attempt and I had waited approximately 20 minutes to get to this bathroom I really didn't have much choice. When I used this bathroom I stared at the ceiling the entire time and had to hold myself back from gagging. Looking down was way too much for my stomach to handle. 

I pray to the good Lord above that I will never have an experience like that again. I doubt it will as this was my by far the worst experience I had but please PLEASE don't let this happen again to me. 

The Yellow Mountain New Year: Huangshan

Last year I went on a mountain to ring in the new year and this year was no different, maybe this will be a new tradition for me. This year's mountain was Huangshan also known as Yellow Mountain. The hiking, the city, and the people were great on the trip but naturally with any trip there were a few bumps in the road so read along to follow the journey!

First, the 2019 New Year break for our school was on a Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. That Saturday we actually had to work but since I took off a personal day for Christmas, I still only worked 5 days that week so I wasn't pining for that three day break that badly. After that Saturday of work, the group I was traveling with received a few bad news. 

I had asked for an itinerary, hotels, and how we were getting to Huangshan only to keep being brushed off. At one point I was told, "There is no reason to be so nervous Chelsea. We have this covered."

Okay then. If you say so. 

The troubles began immediately.

Originally the group was to be six people, two people got sick, reducing the group to four. This was a problem for a few reasons. The person who got sick...they planned the whole trip and they were supposed to drive us to Huangshan in their car and give us a tour of the city. She gave us her car to drive to Huangshan because literally no one else in our group had a car and two of the four of us left were even allowed to drive in China. One of those two had ever driven in the snow in the mountain. It also made the trip more expensive because instead of splitting the cost six ways we now had to split it four ways. So we were off to a great start. 

The first stop we made was halfway between Jiaxing and Huangshan as we didn't want to drive the five hours in the dark. When we were at the hotel I was talking to my roommate and she stated that she didn't want to hike up the mountain with her luggage and that confused me. When I asked her to go into that further she went on to explain that there were ZERO roads that went to our hotel, which was on the top of the mountain, and also..the hotel was expensive even if we would have split it six ways. I was so surprised and angry that no one had told me this and she was surprised that of the five other people going on the trip, they had all failed to tell me this. I hadn't brought a backpack but a carry-on luggage case and that meant I had to borrow someone's backpack when we arrived in Huangshan to carry up the mountain. We had a meeting that night and had to call the person who was supposed to be our guide: How long was the hike? Was the hotel easy to find? What was the booking number? Were there cable cars available? 

I sat there stunned that no one had asked these questions before, they had all blindly trusted this person to take them everywhere. I was also angry that when I had asked these questions earlier that month, I was brushed off, and now my fears were being realized. I was also worried about the hike as I had injured my knee last year and had no idea how rough or easy the trails would be. 

When we arrived in Huangshan the next day we ate KFC, parked the car, got our backpacks, and then headed to a shop that sold water proof coats and pants along with these ice grips you could place over your shoes. 

Looking cool as heck.

It was very cloudy and snowy which scared us all a bit but to all of our delight the cable cars were promised to make a three hour hike into only a ten minute trip. We took the cable car up the mountain but our hotel was still about 45 minutes away. Still way WAY better than the three hours our original guide/group member told us. 

The trails themselves were incredibly easy to hike! The entire mountain has a staircase carved into it, making the hike into more of a pleasant stroll. I have done my share of hiking in Yellow Stone National Park, Teton National Forest, and the Rocky Mountains and this hike was nothing compared to those. By the time we got to our hotel it was dark so we ate dinner, watched Mad Max: Fury Road and went to bed in a very warm hotel. 

We started the next day with breakfast, checked out of the hotel, and went to hike the mountain's various trails. We went to the most famous area where people go watch the sunrise. At that point we had missed the sunrise as it was predicted to be too cloudy to see it so we slept in. We were surprised to see blue skies the next day. 

The hike was very charming. There are supposed to be deer living on the mountain but we only saw a cat and heard a few birds. It was surreal to me at one point, because I realized I hadn't heard birds chirping in a long time. Living in a city, you just don't hear them. 

We ate lunch at one of the restaurants on the mountain then hiked down to a cable car station. It started to get cloudy and then from then on it snowed on us. It wasn't terribly cold but the staircases did get slick. Almost everyone had a hard time with the ice shoe grips as they kept slipping off our shoes. I actually had no problems, and I think it was because I managed to pick up my feet. Those who had more problems were tired and I think were dragging their feet due to exhaustion. We did get to the cable car just fine.

Arriving at the bottom of the mountain we threw away our water proof gear but kept the ice shoe grips to walk to our car. We drove to our next destination which was an "old town." Old towns in China are a popular tourist destination as they are designed to look like ancient Chinese buildings (Moon River in Jiaxing is a fake old town). Some of these are original but there are many fake ones. The one we visited was mostly original. 

Naturally, hotel troubles came back to haunt us. The hotel that was picked by the group had great reviews for the manager but the hotel itself was awful. It was designed to look Japanese but the man who made it clearly had no idea what he was doing. My room had rocks on the ground and you had to hop around to not stab your feet. All the doors were made out of bamboo and paper, like you see in Japan, but the man clearly didn't know that the Japanese have heavy blankets in front of those doors to keep heat in. All of the bathrooms were tiny which was confusing since the living rooms were huge. In my fury I kicked all the rocks to one wall so that I wouldn't have to step on them in the middle of the night. I got my old roommate back as she couldn't stand her unbearable small bathroom. 

You may notice that the shower, sink, and toilet are in the same area.

We blasted our heaters, ate supper, and came back to find our rooms were the same temperature as the outside. To all of our anger we had to book a new hotel that night and couldn't get a refund for this bad hotel. So we paid for two hotels. $$$$ down the small shower drain. 

Our new hotel though....it was AMAZING. There was a fire place, the host roasted us potatoes, and he brewed us tea. The hotel was done in a western style so I found it incredibly comfortable. The bathrooms were huge and the rooms were warm. 10/10 would stay again. 

Three happy campers.

After checking in, we shopped for drinks, snacks, and souvenirs and watched the New Year's countdown on Chinese TV. We had a toast and went to bed. A great way to end the day!

That morning my roommate and I headed off to explore the old town. We ate breakfast in a restaurant that was also a man's house and he let us walk around his old home. It was really cool! He had newspapers and pictures plastered to his walls, old carvings hung on the door, and paintings as well. 

There were many old houses to see from former merchants or dignitaries, an old school, a shopping area, and a lot of places that sold souvenirs, tea, and food. We drove back to Jiaxing that afternoon but first made a stop at a rest area. I will talk about that in a later post...but it was crazy. The male member of our group, Sunny, doesn't actually work at our school and came up to see his girlfriend Evelyn (you may remember them from previous posts) so he had to go to Hangzhou airport and fly back to his city. Evelyn drove the rest of the way home and that was the end of the trip. 

In all, the trip cost us a lot more money than we anticipated and it was stressful for me as many details were never explained to me, even though I had asked. However, there were many delightful parts of our trip like the hike, the old town, and the fireplace hotel. 

Would I go to Huangshan again? Yes, I think I would but I would definitely plan it on my own terms. 

Shanghai Starbucks Reserve Roastery: More Than Just Coffee

A few weeks ago I had a few people message me a link with the Buzzfeed video where a girl goes to a "fancy Starbucks" which is a located in Shanghai along with a question: Was I planning on going?

I watched this video and immediately my answer...was no. The girl in the video talked about how this Starbucks was so great and how "you can only get this here" while she talked about all the imported goods this Starbucks had. It was driving me crazy! The chocolates were from Belgium, the coffee from South America, and even the chef who made the menu was from Italy! Not to mention that the host of this video failed to mention how you even order, if you notice there aren't hanging menus from the wall like normal Starbucks. 

This drove me so insane I went and researched this place and found their website. https://www.starbucksreserve.com/en-us/locations/shanghai    What the host failed to mention is that the Starbucks Reserves (which there are now six) are supposed to be kind of like art installations for coffee. Executive Chairman of Starbucks, Howard Schultz stated, "The Starbucks Roastery environment honors coffee innovation as a modern-day Willy Wonka experience, where customers are only feet away from the theatre and artistry of our coffee craft."

You see where the beans are roasted, sucked through tubes and sent to the different bar areas of the store. They have copper and leather finishes everywhere in the store and the main roasting mechanism is covered in traditional name stamps. 

After a while, it got to me. People were asking so often and it is only one of six in the world, plus I needed to get my co-worker a gift for Christmas and I knew she would like something from the store. I caved and was actually surprised. 

The downstairs area of the Reserve is more of a coffee area and you can also buy merchandise from the store. They have sweatshirts, cups, tote bags, measuring spoons, and phone cases to choose from and yeah...they are expensive. The cheapest mug I could find was 139 RMB which is about $20 USD. Some were up to 300 RMB or $43 USD. 

Upstairs is the tea center and an alcohol bar area. That is right, they serve alcohol in this place! Then I was stumped, again how do you order in this place? I found a server and guess what? Almost every server in this store speaks English and Chinese and they were all really nice despite the fact that it was packed like crazy. A server told me that there are menus by the cash registers and I could take a peak. Servers also have their phones on them and you can order directly from them, if you can pay with WeChat. The servers give you the order number and you wait for it by the bar that specializes in whatever you ordered. For example the tea bar, the espresso bar, coffee bar, and the bakery areas. 

You can order beer and wine in this Starbucks. 

I bought an alcoholic drink and it was really delicious! This is coming from a coffee hater, BTW. Finding a chair in this place was really difficult. It is possible, but maybe have your order to go. 

I ordered the Cold Brew Lemon Sour.

After this experience, I would recommend going to this Starbucks. It is pretty fun but it is also crowded and a little pricey for the merchandise. Go for the experience but don't make this place the place you have to visit in Shanghai. 

Do you hear the call of the Shanghai siren?