Dresses

Women, this entry is for you.

I received an email from a nephew asking about dresses. If you are wondering why a nephew is asking about dresses it is because he has a daughter who is interested in a nice Chinese dress for prom night next year and since uncle Steve is in China he could go dress shopping; couldn’t he?
I showed the email to Jiajing’s mom (“mom”) and the next day she came back with three pictures.

Let us look further.

That dress was an improvement, but let’s see the third picture.

I kind of like these two, especially the one on the right. I was kind of curious where “mom” went to get these pictures and then one day I found out.

It was the Friday afternoon after I had had lunch with Lisa when “mom” and I took a different ferry across the river and then up another river that flows into the Yangtze. We got off and walked a short ways to this alley lined with shops, like you wouldn’t believe. I was speechless for awhile trying to take it all in, but I couldn’t process what I was seeing. – Next fall we will come back for some pictures. – The reason we were here is because I wanted to find the tiles needed to play Mahjong. I found what I wanted and “mom” negotiated a price, which I paid. I put the box of tiles in my small backpack I had with me and wondered how I was going to get all that weight all the way back to America. We will worry about that later, but we need to get back to our dresses.

I wanted to see more shops, but we were on a tight schedule. This being Friday, we still needed to eat and get back across the river in time for choir practice, which I have been going to for the last five weeks. No, I don’t sing, but I just love listening to these women rehearse these old hymns I know. Here is where I find more family connections to work with. The mother of the Chinese girl from Boston is in this choir. Coming to choir rehearse helped established that connection.

As we left the alley of shops, we came to this large building designed like a warehouse. It was many floors high and was filled with shops. We got on the elevator and went to the fifth floor and got off in a woman’s world. All you could see everywhere were dresses. Again I was speechless, but the clerks weren’t. A western man looking at dresses with a Chinese woman was the talk of the day. I have experienced so much of this that I have learned to enjoy it. We looked and took some pictures and I realized that dress hunting was not going to be easy. With a young woman in the states giving direction to an old man in China, I was feeling meltdown. I think it will be easier to bring her back with me and have her pick out her own dress.

Let me show you some more pictures. There was one dress I really liked, but in that quality shop the owner would not allow any cameras.

For starters, here is a whole rack of dresses.

Next is a red one on display in a window.

Another was by the wall.

The next one had a real live body in it, which gave it some character.

The other clerk look disappointed, so we aimed the camera and brought her along. As a man, I figured two were better than one.

The floors below us were more dresses, but less formal and began to include more daily types. Being in a place like this was a first for me, but I knew it was time to leave. Man is a visual creature and all these beautiful dresses with clerks inside them were beginning to draw my focus and I needed to leave.