Panjiayuan market day

Day 16

Panjiayuan / Xuishui / Xidan

Ghost market!!! So apparently Panjiayuan used to be really cool. It’s a giant outdoor market where you can buy anything. You could probably spend all day there. Chandler’s Dad said that it used to be awesome, but that it’s still pretty cool. I guess back in the day there were real antiques mixed in with everything else, so you could get really good deals because no one knew their real value, but those days are no more. We still ended up spending about 5 hours there, and we ended up with a lot of stuff at good prices because it’s another market where you haggle for things. We were there so long that we took a lunch break and went back afterwards.

After we had spent too long at Panjiayuan, we wanted to go back to Xuishui to bargain on a couple more things. We hopped on the subway and bargained for a couple more hours until we had had our fill, at which point we debated either going back to the hotel to rest or to go to one last place before we headed back as it was about 5:30. We opted to check out Xidan, which was supposed to be similar to Wangfujing, but was not too much to be excited about. It was some standard department stores and an underground mall (they build a lot of stuff underground here – it’s a little bit weird). I just bought a couple shirts at a store called Uniqlo, which is kind of like H&M here, although they have that too.

We left Xidan and headed back towards the hotel and met up with Chandler’s parents for our last dinner in China. We headed not too far down the street for some place that was famous for its noodle dishes, and everything was really good. It was an interesting place because there’s lots of yelling. When you walk in the door, someone holds the door open and yells to the restaurant how many people are entering the restaurant, and the same for when people leave. Sometimes the wait staff responds with their own yells. It was interesting to say the least.

After dinner we headed back to pack and whatnot. We leave around 10AM tomorrow for a flight to Shanghai, then Taiwan.

Gahn-Bay.