You know that saying, "it's Greek to me." Meaning I don't understand any of it, it's foreign, indecipherable, absolutely unlike anything I've seen or done before. Well, we've adapted it for China. Today we had many uniquely Chinese experiences. It started with fabric shopping - pick a fabric, take it to a tailor and they make anything your heart desires (as long as you can accurately describe it, which proved to be quite challenging). Bob and I have been many places in the world where clothes are custom made, none like this. I'm not a fan of shopping, but the fabric market was a blast.
There are shops upon shops with fabrics of all sorts. You pick the fabric, the lining, and the buttons. I never realized how the style of a button changes the look of clothing so drastically. My mission was to put together a suit for Kenyon to wear at our weddings - something custom made just for him. He obviously trusts me since he is letting me make this decision without him. I ended up with a navy pin stripe. I think he will look very handsome in it and it will match my outfits.
Between the fabric shop and the tailor we stopped for lunch at a noodle shop. We were with Fiona and two of her good friends. None of us really read Chinese and that was the language of the menu's. What did we do? We walked around the restaurant looking at what other people ordered. The waitress followed. When we saw something we liked we pointed to it (at the strangers table) and the waitress wrote it down. When the food arrived, it was quite an assortment and very, very yummy. It is a riot seeing Bob eat everything with chopsticks. There isn't a fork to be found, so he must get his giant fingers to work these two sticks. We had a good laugh at his expense.
From lunch we headed to the tailor shop. We overwhelmed her with all the details of our grand visions. I had Kenyon's measurements for his suit. We started with charades to let the tailor know what measurement was what; shoulder to shoulder, outseam, inseam, collar and crotch...once successfully communicated, she would write it in Chinese next to the English measurement. We thought we were making good progress until we got to the arm length - her tape measure seamed HUGE and completely unrealistic. That is when we realized we were working with two different systems - our measurements were in inches, hers were in centimeters. What did we do? Fiona just happened to have a tape measure (like the one's used for construction) in her purse. Don't ask me why, she just did. We compared each measurement from the tailors measuring tape to the numbers on the tape measure. What an experience!
As a joke Fiona wanted them to line the inside of the suit with a bright orange silk. When we told the lady this, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. As we were wrapping up the multiple orders, she protested the orange color. We tried to explain that it was a joke. She wouldn't have anything to do with it. She told us she needed more orange material - which we knew wasn't true, but we let her graciously protest our creative spirit. I think Kenyon will appreciate the concession.
Fabric shopping was so much fun. If I lived in China, I might actually enjoy shopping.
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