Wednesday, September 27, 2006
27/9/2006-2
my cam failed on me when i reached shanghai... so i had to resort to using my hp to shoot pictures. sorry for the poor resolution! you don't expect much from a 1.3 megapix phone.shanghai night scene by boat ride!
the structure outside the restaurant we had dinner at. COOL!
oriental pearl tv tower from afar..
up next.. oriental pearl tv tower! the world's 3rd tallest buidling. you can get to see the whole shanghai lit up at night.
night views..
yuyuan gardens.. SHOPPING!
shanghai museum..
my obssession with chinese calligraphy.. hahaha!
i spent the rest of the day shopping at nanjing road till 8pm. the tour guide gave us 5 hours of shopping, after we have been grumbling for the past few days that she didn't give us more time to shop.
and i still wanna say that..
5 HOURS IS STILL NOT ENOUGH LA!
lol.
nanjing road was SUPER PACKED. especially if you go into shops which are having cheap sales. you can't get yourself out of the store once you go in. its even worse than the weekend crowd at orchard road or suntec city. but at least i managed to buy some of the things which i badly wanted. heh heh.
after my trip to shanghai, i realised something. sales assistant from every store willl never fail to ask me and qiufen this question.
where are you guys from?
haha. at first we didn't know how to answer them. reason being, if you tell them you are from singapore, it will be totally impossible to bargain lower prices because they wanna earn our money. and there was one store which we went to, and the two sales assistant kept pressing us to reveal where we are from, as we refused to answer their question. i told them we were from malaysia, and they didn't believe us. lol. too bad! hahaha.
however, there was another reason as to why they asked the question.
whenever we enter a shop, the sales assistant always ask qiufen in mandarin,
does your friend understand chinese? *pointing to me*
LOL. again again again! have to answer the same question for more than a thousand times. of cuz i said i know how to speak and listen to chinese.
super funny la.
when qiufen and i split up to do our own individual shopping on the last day in shanghai, i realised that only the sales assistant would direct me questions asking whether i was local, or whether i understood mandarin, where i'm from, and whether i'm chinese, malay, indian or even mixed blood. because qiufen told me that when she went shopping, the sales assistants all spoke to her in mandarin, and some even spoke to her in shanghainese.
ya la ya la.. qiufen say its my fault when she is unable to haggle the price down, after the sales assistant ask all these questions because i look FOREIGN, and because of that, they would take this opportunity to earn our money. hahaha. don't worry qiufen, i know you meant no offence.
LOL.
i'm pure chinese, ok! although i know alot of people say i don't look chinese, and they get terribly shocked when i spoke in mandarin.
hahaha.. surprise surprise!
after we went to most of the industrial and school visits, and shopping, most of the locals say that they don't know how to listen to our singaporean accent of chinese, because our accent is very different from theirs.
let me tell you. most of the time, i also don't understand what they are talking about because of their accent. i have to go..
huh?? huh?? huh? what are you trying to say? can you repeat it? (in mandarin)
hahaha. this incident also happened on the flight from singapore to shanghai. me and qiufen didn't understand what the air stewardess was saying when she came to serve us food, and the air stewardess got so fed up and said..
aiya! i give you girls two different sets each then you can decide between yourselves which set of meal you prefer! (in mandarin)
lol.
THE END OF THE STORY OF THE IMMERSION TRIP! yay..
cherling wrote on 11:08 pm.
