We arrived in Beijing at midnight and by the time we found our luggage (that had flown over to China on a whole different airline than we ended up on) it was almost 2 am so we didn't see the kids until Sunday morning. It was like Christmas morning -- everyone was so excited to be together and there were presents for all. It was also Mother's day and Quincy's birthday. We had lots of celebrating to do but first we had church at 8:30 am and the meetinghouse was a good 20 minute drive downtown to a high rise office building. By the end of our first day we were wiped out and ready for a good night's sleep... which we got.
First thing Monday morning Heidi had planned for us to go downtown to the fabric market so we could get fabrics for whatever we would want to have custom made for us and get it to the tailor early in our trip so our items would be finished in time for us to fly back home after a couple weeks. Being a seamstress myself, I was very excited to be going to look at fabric! I had no idea it would be such an overwhelming experience!!! This market was made up of small rooms about 8' x 8' (if that big) and jam-packed with rolls and bolts and stacks of fabrics. Each shop had it's own specialty of fabric that it sold: suit fabrics, linings, cotton, silk, shirting material, on and on. All the floors in the shops and in the hallways were concrete. There were no doors on any of the shops and there was all sorts of "traffic" coming and going past and around and through all the hallways. It was basically an open-air market except for a rickety roof that somewhat provided shade from the sun or protection from rain but just barely.
It was really hard to choose from all the choices. I don't do well when I have too many choices. Paul ended up with fabric for a brown suit and a dark blue one. The linings are in the picture too. The red/brown lining looks amazing in his brown suit and the floral stripe lining is beautiful. The red fabric is what I picked out for a jacket for me (I have posted about it down a couple posts). All in all I think we did quite well considering it was our first authentic Chinese shopping experience.
2 comments:
I would love to have design-it-yourself tailors here! Your jacket looks beautiful!
Hey World Traveler--some people are really lucky! You were one of my favorite Sheris, too! But I think you spell it differently. Can't remember how though...old age.
Love your blog.
(I tried this last night, but something happened to delete it.)
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