Shenzhen

Wow! Two posts in such close proximity?! It's amazing!

Well, I went to Shenzhen last Thursday for the primary reason of conducting some field research about Wal-Mart and Carrefour for my marketing case. Maibritt was pretty excited since it was going to be her first visit to a Wal-Mart ever!! We left pretty early, met at the train station at 7:45 am, which meant a 25 min. walk from my place to the station..oi. I also realized I forgot my passport halfway there, so I ran back, then walked up the giant hill and ran back down. I thought I was going to trip over my feet the whole way down..but I made it safely! It took us only half an hour by train to get to the border, meaning I'm closer to China than to the central area of Hong Kong. Wow. We crossed the border, and the immigration man didn't think it was me, so he had someone else come look at my passport. At least he's careful? I gave him a death glare though, there was no way I was getting detained at immigration.

We made it through and took a taxi to Queen's Spa to prepare ourselves for the 'rigorous' research we'd have to conduct later. Going into the spa was like walking into a different world. Everyone's walking around in a standard issued set of PJ's. There's also reclining seats with TV's where you can sleep! That's where you can order different services, such as foot massages. All of us went for the 90 minute Chinese massage. I'm fine with a 30 min. but 90 min. was all they had. My body felt like jello afterwards since I was so relaxed! Afterwards we indulged in the free fruit and juice bar! I got tons of lychee! And some weird tasting Taro Ice Cream. We took some time to rest in the sleeping seats. Maibritt and I went upstairs to get our eyebrows done while Svenja and Simone got foot massages! We ended up having lunch/dim sum there too. It was strange sitting in PJ's while eating lunch in the dining area since it was decorated nicely.

We finally left and took a taxi to Carrefour, a French-based hypermarket. Svenja took tons of pics for our presentation! Their live market was more extensive than Wal-Mart's. You could catch your own live fish, prawns, turtles, etc. I saw a woman with a fish still jumping around in the net, she handed it to the man at the scale/register and he proceeded to whack it on the floor, which proved to be an effective way to make the fish stop jumping around. Wow.

Wal-Mart was Wal-Mart, just tailored to the Chinese consumer. We bought some wontons, Chinese pancakes, etc. for dinner and sat outside. How lovely. Check out my pics!

Maibritt and I stayed behind in the Lo Wu Comercial Center. There were so many stalls and people yelling at us to come look at bags, wallets, etc. all fakes. I'm glad I'm Chinese so they don't bother me as much, but at every shop they would say to Maibritt, "Hey lady, wanna look at bag or wallet?", "Hey nice lady! come look!", etc. It's like the papparazzi. Really.

And that's my trip to Shenzhen!