I recently flew a trip to Beijing. I didn’t visit the Forbidden City as I’d planned. Instead I was lured into the dark, secretive, and oh-so satisfying world of shopping for pirated items. Wait, not pirated, sorry, (mumbling): faux items.
The Chinese government is trying to crack down, though. Raids are sporadic, but shop owners pull up stakes and move frequently. Luckily, there are hundreds of restaurants with “back rooms” and anonymous-looking office buildings with dozens of floors of unmarked doors that they can lease. Here’s where you’ll find the best bargains. But only airline crew and regular travelers know of them because the locations are all word of mouth, leaving the typical tourist to be ripped off on the streets–not so much in price, but in the quality of the items. We airline crew are offered “Best Quality” because if you screw with us, we won’t return and word will get around. After a few hours of walking into restaurants, passing through the kitchens, and into a warren of stuffy and hot back rooms, or trips up a scary elevator to floors with numbered doors, through which you enter a paradise of cheap-but-excellent quality purses and watches, I felt a little like a junky in search of “da fix.”
But the night before, I had the most interesting nail experience. See, I’m about to go on vacation…a real, blissful vacation to the South Seas. So I wanted to get a nail fill–that’s acrylic powder painted over your real nails so they can grow long and your polish lasts for weeks. There’s the pedicure place we go to, located inside a shopping market. The night we landed, I went over there for my pedicure–and foot massage, ahhhh–and asked the ladies if they do acrylic fills.
To begin, they did the manicure thing you never get at home: cuticles, etc, then the fill began: it was all done by hand, painstakingly, each nail filed, acrylic-ed, filed and buffed until each was a work of art! They don’t use the filing machines here like at home at the “nail lady” where I’m in and out in under an hour. It went on and on…for hours, over 2 I think (I lost track because I was so tired from flying here that after a while I was drifting in and out of consciousness!) Sometimes several ladies were working on me at once. Then my nails were lovingly and painstakingly polished. Oh. My. God. I have never had such perfect nails in all my life. But…would I do it again? Hmm. Maybe. Probably. It cost only 12 bucks, US, but it took FOREVER! Maybe if I’m not so tired and I bring a book to read…a BIG book.
One of the Chinese flight attendants told me this joke: If Adam and Eve were Chinese, we’d still be in Paradise. Why?
Answer: They’d have ignored the apple and eaten the snake!
Ha!
Well, I can honestly say I will NOT be missing flying while I laze on a tropical island sipping drinks with exotic names and little paper umbrellas in coconuts. Wishing you a lovely few weeks and a fantastic Fourth of July, should you live where it is celebrated!
