Double 11 and 007.

It turns out attending uni and writing a blog and being an au pair and writing a blog are two very different things. Basically I spend enough time writing and staring at screens and books that blogging has been moved down the priorities list. Also all the things I wan’t to talk about are piling up and glaring at me reproachfully. SO I’m ignoring the past two months and will hopefully get back to them, because lots of both interesting and amusing things did happen. For now however I’m going to write about some very capitalist occurrences that happened this week.

The first is the Double 11 sales, for those not in the know, take America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday ( I’m not even bothering to include our pitiful Boxing Day sales), and triple it and you’re still not even close to the amount of money spent on single’s day. 91 billion RMB this year, and I am proud to say I joined in. I have already done half my Christmas shopping, yes I’m that smug person that come December will have finished it all, and treated myself with my paycheck that conveniently arrived that same day.

11/11 emerged as Anti Valentines Day in the early 90s, the four 1s represent the bare branches of single life, cheery I know. In 2009 Alibaba turned it into a shopping extravaganza to celebrate being single. Obviously not to create revenue in the traditional shopping lull between the Mid-Autumn and Spring Festivals, that’s far too cynical a reason….

Anyway it’s amazing! I set up my taboo account a couple of days before and then gleefully filled up my shopping basket. A new pair of shoes dropped from 350 RMB to 170RMB, a cardigan coat from 1500RMB to 200RMB, and lots of Lindt, enough to last me to Christmas. I had to be there at midnight though which is when all the best deals are, a lot of it is ‘the first 100 people get it for 50RMB’ type thing. At midnight I clicked buy but was stalled by the annoyingly terrible and slow Chinese internet, and after 10 more minutes of trying managed to actually purchase it! However I had to watch my basket get more and more expensive as all the best deals were snapped up, sadly it started off at 850RMB and ended on 1400RMB. Each time I tried and failed to buy it it just got more expensive. 

Pretty Shoes!

Combined with all the Christmas presents I’ve had 15 parcels to pick up, that sounds like a dull chore, which it is, but it’s a dull chore with a China twist. Delivery was pretty quick, the first arrived Wednesday afternoon, and I’m only waiting for one more not even a week later. However, one does not simply walk to the post office and collect one’s parcels, in fact the post office isn’t even involved. You go to these designated parcel spots with only a single digit number, this number refers to the pile that you get to look through to find you’re own parcel! Yay! Fun! Each pile has about 20-40 packages in it, unsurprisingly it takes a while to search through. Not just due to the number but also the fact it’s in a dark car park, and the type is very small, and it’s in Chinese and the first time I did it it took me 35 minutes to find 2 parcels because I didn’t know the layout of the address or the parcel system and It Was All In Chinese, and Oh My God why can’t they just hand it over to me!!! 

Also they’re all very dirty and dusty, requiring much hand washing after going through the ridiculous amount of packaging. There’s so much packaging that a simple computer cable came in a box big enough to hold a pair of Doc Martens. 

Anyway… I’m quite good at it now, so that’s a skill I can put on my CV.

I had a speaking exam on Thursday which I think went quite well, but that evening we went to see the midnight showing of Bond, which has only just been released here. I was feeling pretty crap, but wanted to finally see Spectre, so just before midnight we all squished into an Uber (yes I Uber now) and headed up to the cinema. I powered through with the sugary fuel of Pepsi and the insanely sweet popcorn they provide here, no salted unfortunately. We did miss the first couple of minutes because films here start at the actual showing time. No salted popcorn and no 25 minute long trailer session, sad, sad times. 

Ah the magic Popcorn!

They are not the only differences in terms of Cinema experience here in China, people don’t seem to have the same movie watching respect as we do back home. There’s talking, texting, talking texting (which is where you send a voice text instead of just typing it) and, as the couple next to me decided to do, nipping out halfway through with your pregnant wife for a fag break. Wrong on so many levels. Now all this is easy to ignore when it’s background noise, but when you have your Chinese friend sitting next to you doing all the above it becomes a tad tricky to put it to the back of your mind. I was already feeling crap, jacked up up on sugar and excited to be seeing Bond at last, then I have the incessant questioning, ‘Did I know Ben Whishaw was gay?’, ‘Isn’t that lady too old to be a Bond girl?’, ‘Are all Bond films this long’, critics would probably have a field day with that last one. I also took umbrage with the old Bond girl one, but that’s with hindsight, at the time my main (unvoiced) thoughts were, this is Bond, woman! Respect the film! Stop Talking!

I really enjoyed the film but then at the end, just before the happy ending scene, everyone got up and started talking louder, and left. Come on people wait till the credits!!!

So going to the cinema, not as universal an experience as one would expect. Sale shopping however, that’s a global interest.

P.S. The Humidity is really messing with my hair...

P.P.S Great Health and Safety