The Search For A Chinese Dress Begins!

Saturday March 23^rd, 2013

A while back I, as well as Maxime, signed up for something called along the lines of “Traditional Promote Fun Market.” We didn’t receive many details over it but it was described as doing games for fun like bingo, selling a product and naming fruits in Chinese. It was spilt over two days, one today and the other on 3/31. Not knowing what would exactly happen, I headed out to a new place Xihu market located right under the subway station.

Meeting up with Maxime, we had trouble finding the correct location and several phone calls to ladies that organized the event were needed. One came and found us, leading us to a red black and white tent. Upon our arrival, a cooking contest of some sort was taking place and we were told to sit patiently. The cooking contest needed to finish and other foreigners participating in this thing-ma-whats-it had yet to come. Apparently only four foreigners total (including me) signed up but only three actually came, contrasting my thought that it was a big event.

While waiting, the ladies told us that we would be selling a product for a competition. Something called “wen2 duan4” that is like a small version of a dumpling usually put in soup. They said we needed to sell eight boxes in one minute. My initial thought was ‘oh goodness me how the heck do I do that?!’ My imagination was I needed to run out on the street and sell there in a mad dash of charm and salesmen talk. In my mind I created several product-advertising phrases in Chinese to MAKE ME WIN! >:D Man they were good and I was ready! BRING IT!

All of a sudden, the speaker asked the foreigners to come up on stage. Woah, I didn’t think this event would be a stage show for Taiwanese people to watch. I have no problem with being on stage but I no longer had any clue what this event was anymore. After introducing ourselves to the crowd, we were able to sample one of these ‘wen duan’ thingies, given a plastic bag with eight boxes, told to sell them at 10NT a small box (pretty cheap) and then…all hell broke loose.

It was time to sell these puppies but what I thought was a skill of Chinese advertising turned out to be a raging audience practically climbing on stage to buy them. They can be accurately described as a pack of wild animals grabbing for the boxes and even diving their hands into the plastic bag and taking the boxes without any consent. Pure and utter chaos! Seeing something like this was nauseating. Andrea didn’t like it at all.

Eight boxes at 10 NT each would mean we needed 80NT total in the end, right? Well because of that unruly desperate mob, I only ended up with 60NT. Not just me either, Maxime only had 60NT as well but the other foreigner girl luckily got 80NT by some magic making her the winner. We each got a prize of two boxes of wen duan and…

That was it. It was already over. Barely ten minutes was spent for that and it ended. Beforehand in an e-mail we were told to get there at 10:15 and the contest would be from 11:00-11:30. Nope, because we were dismissed at 10:50. Really strange but I can’t blame them since it was such a small event.

Not yet time for lunch, Maxime and I walked around seeing the Xihu market, which was also diminutive. It sold mainly raw foods like fish or meat along with fruit, basically foods meant as ingredients for cooking. There was a small petite cafeteria area on the second floor for eating and drinking. We went here for lunch even if half an hour earlier before midday.

This sign was at a ramen place. It’s too cute not to show y’all! ;D Makes ramen sound intense, huh? XD

Maxime and his meal.

Yours truly. Notice how I dressed up because I thought we needed to look nice for selling the product (unknown at the time) at the market event. Yeah, pointless to do so but oh well cuz I looked good. :P

Not exactly sure what my lunch was but it probably was some type of cooked wrap with a bowl of grainy soup. The wheaty soup stuff was unsweetened and quite tasteless, not gaining any fondness from me. The wrap stuff was very tasty though with cucumber, meat, other veggie, a bit of sauce and a delightful outside that had both a crispy and soft layer. It redeemed the meal deliciously.

Following the main meal, we grabbed some fruit juice nearby. I chose mango milk, which I found out was a great choice. ;) Freshly made with real milk and fruit, it had a light natural sweet flavor. Very tasty and enjoyable!

Next the two of us went to meet up with my host parents at Houshanpi MRT station to visit the close clothe market to look for traditional Chinese dresses. We searched and found very little, only a couple of small stores with a limited selection. It was surprising with how scarce Chinese dresses were.

This was one I really liked because of the two birds (Peacocks? Phoenixes?) but was too expensive and didn’t have desired leg cuts. I was looking for a long traditional dress with the two leg cuts on the sides and the iconic Asian diagonal fold across the shoulder. Not this one of course but I think it’s quite beautiful.

At one store we found ‘special priced’ ones that matched my desires in the colors of blue, pink and black with red. They let me try them on in a makeshift curtain that acted as the dressing room. I don’t have a good picture of me wearing it because pictures weren’t allowed but Maxime snapped a quick shot with his phone(he needed a photo reference to give his Belgium Mom since she wants a dress, the reason why he came along today) and sent it to me. Does it suit me? :P

For $33 for a dress + $5 for adjustments, I couldn’t decide between the black and blue colors. Same design but opposite extreme colors, one that’s a BRIGHTLY LUMINESCENT BLUE and another that’s dark refined black with red contrasts. My mind couldn’t be made up between them so we put them in the back of our mind and continued searching. We found another tiny place with similarly designed red Chinese dresses, one long and one short. Yet another decision put on the back burner because it didn’t immediately capture my heart. We had another place to check, a forty-minute subway ride away. No luck there at all so no dress was purchased today. We’ll check at another place perhaps in another week.

Nearing dinnertime, host mother led us to a restaurant with hot pot and curry selections. While waiting for the food, we drank this “dong gua cha” (Winter Melon Tea). It was delectable!

Host mother and her chicken egg curry meal.

Maxime with his hot pot.

Host father and his hot pot.

My meal! It was a pork steak, egg curry thing. Rice was hiding underneath the layer of egg on the right. This was DELICIOUS! Oh my Lordie I loved it! Though curry it wasn’t spicy but boy was it delectable! I gotta find this kind of stuff back in Texas because I really like it! Oh by the way, I apologize to my Dad for making fun of him eating eggs with ketchup all those years ago thinking it was nasty. This meal corrected me big time. SO GOOD! :D

Nothing else to report. Therefore, I’ll end this Taffy now because I’m quite tired. Night all. :)