Shopping

I post this especially for Lena as she just asked me this question.

What can I say about shopping in Shanghai? IT SUCKS...It really does.. The first thing is that everything is so damn expensive here: clothes, shoes, lingerie, cosmetics, etc. The word "sale" is unknown to the customers and sellers here, it just doesn't exist. There are two major segments existing in Shanghai:

• Premium shopping - Gucci, Givenchy, Armani, Marc Jacobs .. well you got it .. And Chinese people DO buy it a lot :-o
  You can see people in the center on Huiahai Lu or Nanjing Lu going with all these bags blowing away thousands of RMBs just like that..it smells like Tverskaya in Moscow, doesn't it?



• Market shopping - this is what you would find on Izmaylovo or Cherkizovskiy rynok in Moscow. The low quality products at low prices, though sometimes I see low quality at high prices. But I think the sellers just see the loawai (foreigner) face and raise the price.

For the middle layer of shopping of course you can find such brands as Zara, Vero Moda, Promod, etc, but the selection is focused on the Chinese market and the design is a bit weird for me and the proportions are odd as well as sizes. But what kills me the most there are no SALES and it's summer!!! What are they doing with old collections I wonder? May be next time I go to the shop, I'll just ask, can be quite an interesting conversation
Still I learned that outlets do exist, and found a good one for shoes - Foxtown (1F, Shanghai Mart, 2299 Yan'an Xi Lu) not far from Yana's house. Will definitely be back! They even have Guess shoes for reasonable prices! Mmmm.....

There's also a fake bags market that I have already discovered. You can find all the famous brands there LV, Hermes, Channel, etc for 100 RMB of course you have to be careful and know exactly what you want and how it looks in original to be able to choose the good quality fake...lol..I'm not so good at it, need to educate myself via Internet and brand shopping. At the same market they can sell you a nice Samsonite suitcase for just 200 RMB, so next time I'm in the airport I will not be fooled with all these Samsonite around me pretending to be originals...hehehe...

As for me I'll be doing my shopping in Prague and duty free, unless I find the way around :=)