Buy It Here: Fabric Shopping

It's my fourth day wearing black.  I'm in mourning, you see - my home country appears to be on the brink of burning to the ground.  Maybe I'm exaggerating.  I'd love to be wrong.  When I saw my Dark Lord and Master on Facebook yesterday morning, I hit him up for some words of comfort.  As usual, he answered with a thoughtful, well-written analysis, and it made me feel a little better (admittedly, he's a man who considers Chinggis Khaan to be one of history's greats and a personal hero, but since I'm surrounded by people like that, it didn't actually take anything away from what he had to say).  Still, I'm concerned.  I almost wish I was going home, so that I could fight the thing that really worries me - the ignorance and hate that has already started rearing its ugly head, if Twitter is to be believed.

But I'm not.  If I can't get my dream job, I'll stay longer, or go wherever I can, if they've already replaced me by the time I give up hope.  In that case I'd like to leave something behind.  Guidance, let's say, for the next person who comes along.  So I'm going to try to write some find-it posts.  Last time I showed off my sewing projects, so it seems apropos to start with where to find sewing stuff.

I use a lot of special stuff for my plushies that was brought from the States, but obviously I can't fit all the yards and meters of fabric I need in my suitcase.  Summer taught me that if I'm home, I should start and finish looking at JoAnn's, because they literally have everything.  Unfortunately, Mongolia doesn't have JoAnn's.  Or Michaels.  Or even a freaking Hobby Lobby.  What it DOES have is Naran Tuul - aka, the Black Market.  Not that kind of black market.  This one is legit (a fact that I already mentioned when I wrote about it my first year)...when it isn't on fire (yes, that's happened, fortunately in the early morning while no one was there).  And amongst the many, many things that are available there is fabric.   There are two similar blue-roofed buildings in the Black Market.  The fabric and associated supplies are in the left hand one, if you're looking from the front.

You have to do the proper mental preparation before you go to the Black Market.  It's crowded, and busy, and there's not a lot of space.  People will push past you, and if you try to be polite and wait for people to get out of your way, you'll be there a long time.  There are also pickpockets, so you have to be aware of your surroundings (and for the love of everything good, if someone offers to take you there, don't give them panic attacks by having your passport on you!)  But it's my best suggestion for one-stop fabric shopping that doesn't involve getting on a plane (I left Korea nine years ago and I still miss Dongdaemun).  They have a variety of fabric, buttons, ribbons, thread - most of what you're going to need - and bargaining is sort of expected.  For me, the drawback is that it can be really dirty.  The fabric market is covered, but not fully enclosed, so all of the coal dust/dust/other pollution stands a chance of coming into contact with your cloth.  Most of the fleece I bought there I just washed once and it was fine, but I bought some pale pink this fall that I ended up using most of my supply of Goop to clean...and it still has some nasty spots.

There are other options, of course.  One is the variety of small shops scattered around, called "boos baraa" (БѲС БАРАА).  There are a number of these on Baga Toiruu, up the street from the Flower Center, past the stop light and on the other side, but I've seen them in other places as well.

The ones on Baga Toiruu seem like to function like the fabric market in Shanghai - you can actually get clothes made there.  And by clothes, I mean deel.  And by fabric, I mean silk deel cloth.  Four-plus years I've been here and I still haven't had traditional Mongolian clothes made for me, but when I stumbled into this shop, I almost did it that day.  They had Hello Kitty fabric.  Hello Kitty isn't really my kind of anime, but she's one of the few cartoon characters Babysis has any attachment to, thus, Bunny loves her.  It is possible that Bunny loved my new Hello Kitty skirt so much that she demanded I bring it to dress up at the family reunion this summer - you won't know for sure because I've censored the photos, but let's just say that when a three-year old tells her favorite aunt that she only gets to see twice a year to bring her "tutu," it happens.  I haven't given Bunny a deel yet, mostly because Babysis wouldn't appreciate it, but this might be the year.  It can't possibly be worse than the glitter-covered Rapunzel dress she got from me last year!

Long Wander Saturdays

I love junk. I think this must be a tendency I get from my mom, for, as my dad will gladly tell you, my mother is up to her eyeballs in junk. I go in for a slightly different kind of junk than her, which is good, since there are fewer Wal-Marts here in Shanghai and they have distinctly different merchandise, but I can't deny the fact that I do like buying stuff. And on the streets of Shanghai, usually here in Hongqiao along our very favorite road, Hongmei Lu, on blankets spread out on the sidewalks, you can buy a wide assortment of junk. And somehow, until today, it never occurred to me to wonder where the purveyors of all that crap got it from.

Today I found out.

Last week I paired my trip to the fabric market with a long wander around Tianzifang (which I still haven't written about, but I will before I leave Shanghai, as it's one of my most favorite places here). It was a nice chance to stretch my legs and kill some time before a friend's housewarming party, and I decided to do the same thing after this week's fab market run (in which I had to have one tailor work some more on the cashmere skirt they made me, and ordered 3 more pairs of corduroy pants from another tailor, who totally nailed the ones I ordered a week ago). I decided that after I would walk from the fabric market to the Peach Garden Mosque via a gritty, local area (gritty as in: I've learned how to tell which eggs are the delicacies with chick embryos in them...they have a slightly green cast. I know because at least one of them was cracked open at every stall selling them so you could see they were selling you good, fertilized eggs. Yum). There wasn't a lot to see at the Peach Garden Mosque, so I went onward to the Confucianist temple on Wenmiao Lu.

Now, you might rightly ask exactly how many temples I've seen in my travels abroad. And you might rightly ask exactly how different they can all be, even if we are just limit our talk to Asia. The truth is, not that much, and yet, I have been to a fair number of them. But I'll let you in on a little secret. Sometimes, in Shanghai, you forget that you're in Asia (well, apart from the tons of people crowding around you speaking Chinese). Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that there are things here that are different, in a nice way. Like so:

And thanks to the rain today, it was even less crowded than anywhere in Shanghai has any right being. It was nice. And hey - your 10 kuai admission price came with a tea ceremony.

Little caveat for you, though - the girl preparing your tea will make six or seven different kinds, and will go on making you as many kinds of tea as you like. It's a nice way to rest your feet, but if you haven't scheduled any bathroom breaks on your wander you may find yourself in trouble later on...

I finished checking out the temple, then went on my way toward my ultimate goal: the Dongtai Rd Antiques market. However, I forgot to orient myself and when I came to a major road I started following it, thinking I was on Xizang Lu when I was on Renmim Lu, and went a block or so too far. This turned out okay, because while I was figuring my problem out I realized I could stop by the Bird, Fish, and Insect Market. If you are starving to see some wildlife, like, perhaps a squirrel or chipmunk, this might be the only place in Shanghai to do it. Of course, though, these aren't exactly wild. And I warn you, it's not for the faint of heart. This place wouldn't exist in the states because it would get PETA all up in arms...but we're not in the states. And the most amazing thing about this place is the crickets. The photo above here? Those are cricket cages, and they're all filled up. That bit in the movie Mulan about the lucky cricket is true, and it's not a thing of the past. The sound alone is amazing. And these are not our friendly little tiny American crickets - these crickets could beat the snot out of a grasshopper.

So I finally had my fill of crickets and other assorted living things, and crossed the street over to the antique market. It really was a treat.

You can buy everything from silver "Tibetan" jewelry here to ceramic Mao statues to paintbrushes, hardware for doors....all sorts of crap.

If I hadn't blown all my spending money this month at the fabric market on leather pants and Chinese style winter vests, I might have done it here. As it it, when I get paid again I might come back here and get some crap for my nearest and dearest. Best part of buying souvenirs here? You'll never have to worry about taking off the "Made in China" sticker.

Me and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Well. Not a whole lot has been going on around here. Got caught up in the winter doldrums, and have been axing deserving individuals from my life (Socrates has not been mentioned on here in a very long time, but it wasn't until January that I finally cut him out of my life, thanks to the fact that he came back to Shanghers this fall and I - like an idiot - felt sorry for him). I've also been busily job hunting - this recruiting season, I sent out 29 applications, but it wasn't until three weeks ago that I set up my first interview. I was excited for that one, since it would have sent me to Marrakesh and a K-12 art position, if I had succeeded. After the interview, I felt like it was okay, but decided that rather than sit around and hope they called, I started filling out other applications. One of them was for the American School of Ulaanbaatar, for a secondary art job, just in time for their deadline. Later that night, I got a reply, asking for an interview, and after talking to their personnel consultant, and their principal, I was offered the job. It's not Marrakesh (who I never heard back from), but I have a feeling God was guiding me in this, since there are several congregations of my church in Ulaanbaatar itself, whereas there's just the one in all of Morocco, and that in faraway Rabat. And I think I'm going to like working for the principal a lot, and I work a lot harder for people I like (sad but true), and there is a decent-sized Korean population in UB, and while the salary is a little less, the taxes are as well, and I won't have to pay for rent or utilities (other than phone), and all in all, I think it's going to be a good place for me.

That said, Mongolia is really, REALLY bloody far north. Right now it's 19F up there, although tomorrow the high's supposed to be 28 (almost above freezing - How about that!) So I celebrated being offered my contract with a trip to the fabric market. Ostensibly, this was to buy layers, but far be it from me to leave China (thank goodness!) without doing my part for it's (endless) economic growth spurt. So in addition to the two pairs of long underwear I had copied in silk jersey (silk wicks sweat away from your skin) and the two plain shirts I had copied to put under other shirts, I ordered a dress, and a copy of a wrap skirt I own (except out of wool knit instead of the light breezy cotton it was originally made of)...and while I was looking for colors of the wool knit that DIDN'T look like the 60's threw up all over it, I found the most awesome shiny gold and blue leopard print, and decided I needed a dress made out of that, too. I told myself no more leopard print after the pencil skirt I bought back home last summer...but one more can't hurt, right?? Especially one like this - I figure I can go out dancing in this over the summer when I visit the Evil One in Lima...

Anyways, after the Shanghai Literary Festival - where Shermeen and I listened to Steffi Schmidt tell us the preface of her book...err, talk about her book, Shanghai Promenade (mostly stories about German spies who used to live here - we weren't unduly impressed, although Meen went ahead and bought the book and has promised to share any gems that tumble forth from the very dense book) - and lunch at Charme on East Nanjing Rd, I headed down to the fabric market to pick up my new clothes. The shirts and underwear were fine, the leopard-print was stunning in a nice, loud way, once they lowered the neckline a little, and the skirt - well, they need to reverse it so the purple layer is on top and the black on bottom, but it fit fine and I think it will be nice and warm, I may even have to have another made. And the other dress? It was beyond amazing. It was the best thing I've bought at the fabric market. It fit perfectly and was really flattering. This is it...

I decided to start calling the girl in the shop the Little Chinese Seamstress. I met her last spring when JoAnn was next door ordering shirts...it took a long time and as I was wandering around the third floor, I ended up in her shop because I saw a dress that I thought was really cute. The Little Chinese Seamstress was very convincing - she had good English and she wheedled me into ordering the dress I stopped to admire, even though I was kind of over buying things that day. It's a good thing she did, because everything she's made has turned out well. This is the fourth dress she's made me, and by far the best. It goes a little past my knees, has a flat panel down the middle of the front with ruching down both sides. My only wish is that she had more patterns to choose from - it's a really small shop - and that fewer people had discovered her, because she's usually pretty busy. I promised her today that I'd be back every month til I left, and I fully intend to. Leaving behind the fabric market is going to be one of the hardest things about leaving Shanghai. Here's the original dress she made me...

Speaking of leaving Shanghai, I've decided to live it up tourist style until I go. I've told myself that I will write a blog every week til then. While I bitch about the fact that there's not much soul to this city, there are lots of things I haven't done yet. So stay tuned.

Fabric Market Fun

Please note...the next installment may be called Fabric Market Folly. See, I decided I would be a "risk-taker" this weekend. I went out on a limb and brought the leather shop a sweater, asking them to copy it as a leather jacket. Only time (approximately two weeks) will tell if this turned out to be a good idea or a collosal waste of money.

One of my favorite things about Shanghai (right after JoAnn and our new PE teacher, whom I'll call Iron Man (he is not only smart but bears a vague resemblance to David Tennant AND has an ass you could bounce a quarter off of), is the fabric market. JoAnn and I finally got into it last spring, and for the last month of school we were going every Saturday. It. Was. Wonderful. Except when it wasn't. Let me explain. There's this building, three stories tall, jam-packed with little booths filled with fabric of all kinds and tailors to go along with it. And I do mean little...this is one of JoAnn and the Sarahs' favorite tailors - it can get claustrophobic at times, and some people (ahem, myself) may wander off to check out other things.

So, as you can see, there are samples hanging up all over, and in theory, you can walk in, pick out a garment you like (some of them copies of famous designers), select fabric, and a week or so later you'll have brand new clothes. I say "in theory" because sometimes this turns out to be a catastrophe. I've done this and had clothes come out that just will not work. They fit, but they look terrible. They look fine but the fit is uncomfortable. Whatever. You try your new clothes on, and the tailors do their best to fix them, when something is wrong, buuuuuuut...sometimes there's no fixing it. And sometimes you have to kind of compromise. Of the clothes I've ordered from examples, only one dress has been right the first time. The much safer route is to bring in something you already own and telling them to copy it. EVERYTHING I've brought in to copy has worked the first time, and this is one of the reasons I did SO much shopping this summer.

Which brings us to my sweater. I got it at Lord & Taylor while I was shopping clearance racks with the Evil One this summer, and it turned out to be really flattering. Sometime since then I've convinced myself that it would be a REALLY cool leather jacket, and JoAnn had success with one of the leather shops last spring, so I decided to take a chance. They had some concerns, but we agreed on a price and leather and they took my sweater and my measurements.

However, that wasn't all I ordered this weekend. I was going to punish myself for backsliding/encourage myself to lose weight by making myself wait until I'd taken off ten pounds. Then I spent Friday morning trying to figure out what I was going to wear to school on my dress up day (ie, the day I only teach one hour of art), and I realized how GOOD new and interesting clothes made me feel. I've been struggling to find a balance between accepting my body as it is and not giving up on trying to improve it. Well, wearing nice new clothes makes me feel a lot better about the shape I'm in (as does having the doctor tell me that my blood sugar and fat are totally normal, but that's a story for another day), and when I feel good, it's easier for me to make good choices, so roll on, South Bund Soft-Spinning Market! In the end I ordered five shirts, my leather jacket, a cushion-sized fitted sheet to go on the couch-cushion in my window seat (that's the sheet/quilt store above), and a Chinese-style floor pillow made with four different patterns of silk brocade (that one was a whim, but one that I'm really excited about!)