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Shopping in Shanghai

• I did some shopping, not because I needed new clothes but just because I was told that the shopping experience in Shanghai was very different from the one in Europe and I wanted to experience it myself.

• First, you can bargain almost everything.

• That is why, when you go shopping in Shanghai your state of mind is completely different from when you go shopping in Europe.

• In Europe, you have a fixed budget and you know you will have to pay the price tag whereas in China everything is possible, you can always bargain before buying something.

• Your clothes often explain your social background because everybody knows approximatively how much you have paid for yours clothes.

• Indeed, when you have an entry level position in these banks (when you graduate from a business school’s master), you are expected to wear proper clothes but you are also expected not to wear too expensive clothes because it would be interpreted as if you was trying to look like somebody you are not.

• When a man tries on only a tee-shirt he does not use the cabin.

• In Europe, even if being shirtless is not sexually charged (for a men), trying on clothes is something intimate and personal that you cannot do in front of everybody.

• Actually, it depends on the context, being shirtless or being beside a shirtless man is not disturbing if you are on the beach.

• However, if you are shirtless in an urban area or in the middle of a shop, it turns out to be very disturbing.

• It is as if the limit between what is intimate and what is not depends on the context.

• In a crowded beach a shirtless man can stand beside a woman even if they don’t know each other.

• However in an urban area or a shop, the girl would avoid crossing the way of the shirtless man because if she stood next to the man it would mean they are intimate, they are close….

• Here in China this distinction does not seem to exist: some woman in the crowded shop stood close to the shitless men who were trying clothes and neither the men nor the women seem to feel disturbed by the situation.

• Third, I experienced the fake market.

• I heard of the Chinese fake markets before arriving in Shanghai but I did not expect them to be so “obvious”.

• I thought they were trying to be hidden or to look like “classic shops”.

• I thought the fake market would be hidden in the middle of a bunch of classic shop in order to avoid the police checks.

• I expected the public administration to try to close this kind of market but actually everybody knows that it is a fake market and nobody cares.

• In Europe, the shop assistants come to ask you if you need help, information or advice but they do not try to sell you something directly because they know European customers like to take their time to choose something.

• But in China (according to what I have seen) people are more likely to buy a product if the shop assistant encourages them to buy it and if he is very insistent.