Shopping!

Today we got out and saw parts of Guangzhou that we never would have been able to find or deal with if it wasn't for Jason, who is one of the local workers on the FedEx project. He grew up in Guangzhou and was anxious to show us the city and take us to places that most tourists don't know about. He explained that in China there is a shopping district for the type of thing you are buying. Our first stop was at the jade market. It is shop after shop of nothing but jade. Jason asked that I get an idea of what I wanted before we went to see his friend, who is a wholesaler. When I had looked around enough to know what I was looking for, he gave her a call and she popped out of an alley and motioned us to some concrete steps (dark, steep and no handrails) that led to a little upstairs room where a lady was waiting for us. We all sat down and Jason acted as our translator. They pulled out all kinds of jade and it was so fun to see how pretty it was. After about an hour and several purchases, we thanked the ladies and headed out. As we were going down the alley to get to the main area we saw an old man digging through the garbage and picking out food. Jason told us there was a Buddhist temple just down the street, so we went there. Many people were burning incense and offering prayers --it was fascinating. We went into the temple, where there are 500 Buddhas. After that Jason took us down a very crowded street--he said he was taking us for lunch. We had expressed concern about the safety of the food and he said this was a safe place for us to eat and a very famous restaurant in Guangzhou. On the way there we walked down what looked like a street version of a food court--complete with octopus and scorpion on a stick--people did seem to be enjoying it, but I was relieved to find that was not where Jason was taking us! We had a delicious lunch--goose with crispy skin and sauce, fried noodles, shrimp with pine nuts and seasonal vegetable with garlic. We also had Chinese tea--the cups are so tiny and the tea is very strong. After that we went to the silk market--I could have just stayed there for hours looking at all of the beautiful fabrics! Then is was off to the leather district--huge, the Chinese wholesale market--like an Asian version of the gift markets in the states, and on to several other places that I can't name or our girls will know what they are getting for Christmas! After we were finished, we invited Jason to come into the hotel and have drinks with us--we had a great time talking with him. He is 24 and is very interesting. He will be traveling to the US for the first time in December, so he had lots of questions. Then it was time for him to go, we headed off for dinner and are hoping to get to bed early tonight. Today we saw the crush of people that we haven't seen here on Shamian Island.