dico's

22nd april '07

a few weeks ago we checked out the north side of the river (jiang bei). the shopping was really good there - infinitely better than what i had encountered on our side. my first few shopping trips on the south side were almost fruitless, save for the purchase of a pair of thermals that turned out to be way too tight. but on this more recent occasion, the northside bore a top, a sweater, a cute pair of tan leather ballet flats, a bag and slippers for less than $100AU. fantastic, i say. although, i must say i was quite lucky this day, as i've found generally that shopping in songyuan is a challenge. first of all, i seem to be an XL here. in australia i'm a size 8-10, sometimes a 12 if the sizing is on the smallish side. but here i've tried on a lotta larges and extra larges, and emerged from myriad fitting rooms downcast and attempting to mime and/or enlist the services of translator andy to utter "too small! too small!" in chinese. after one wash, two of the extra large blouses i've bought seem to be too tight for me now. something else about chinese shopping that provides me with a conundrum is the over-embellishment on garments and shoes. they love their embroidery, sequins, diamantes, sparkles, glitter, trimmings, lace, graffiti, studs and chains, adorning almost anything and everything. ok. so maybe i exaggerate a tad. i think it just seems a bit too much for me, the girl that loves her simple, basic t-shirts. i feel like such a fussy shopper when i say i don't like every second garment i see here. the truth is that i'm used to a certain taste in clothes. i'm not quite ready for a pair of jeans with an embroidered cartoon flamingo on the rear pocket, surrounded by glittering shooting stars and with the sentence "cool fashion flamingo style star" emblazoned down the outside leg. that said, for every 100 items, there's always a pearler somewhere in the mix. you've just gotta be patient in scouting out the gems.

speaking of gems, we discovered one in the realm of fast food that day. we discovered dico's. kind of like a version of kfc, with a few meat burgers and a couple of token touches of asian influence (like miso soup). this fast food joint (where the food isn't actually served fast at all) is a quality example of westernisation of chinese tastes. images printed onto the walls feature all-american families with angelic blonde little girls tucking into dico's golden french fries or a non-greasy (lie) battered drumstick. naturally, these pictures are superimposed onto images of stars and stripes. even better, look towards the tv screens and you will see a reel of dico's propaganda showing ads galore, promoting and flattering the very food the diners are eating, interspersed between chunks of old school tom and jerry episodes. crazy stuff. it's quite a hypnotising thing they've got going there. now the food, is super-greasy, super-yummy and super-addictive. when we need a western food fix (which is quite often as i'm getting sick of the eating the same old vegetarian dishes week after week) and are on the north side, we high-tail it to dico's and order a zinger burger clone or a delectable deep fried prawn fritter sandwich (tastes immensley better than it sounds).

on a less-appetizing note, andy spotted a girl in our travels that day pulled down her pants, squatted and peed in the middle of a wide and busy shopping mall street. he was not impressed with the moon, nor the sight of pee not flowing in a unified stream. as shocking as it was, i'm sure we ain't seen nothing yet.