Upon landing in China, the first day of the next year began. I was a little scared to pass through the heat reading scanning area as I had a cold and was little afraid that Communist China would assume i was trying to traffic the H1N1 virus into their country. After successfully entering the country of China, my next obstacle was to get my 4 pieces of total luggage to catch the Maglev into the city to meet my good buddy Trent. After not being able to get the calling card to work in order to call him I decided to go ahead and venture forth. I purchased my 40 rmb ticket and boarded the train. After a quick 8 min ride at over 261 mph, I was in the city in no time. And as luck would have it, a friendly face was waiting for me. After 2 subway rides later, we finally arrived at his house, my temporary housing.
The apartment was clean, spacious, but I would say rather uncomfortable. As all of the furniture was hardwood, it looked nice, but it might as well have been made of stone. As the wooden futon was going to be me bed for the next 3 nights, I was hoping that this furniture might at least have an added benefit of correcting my posture.
One of my first missions was to go to the 'Modern Electronics Mall' I had read about on Shanghai Expat. Upon our first trip, we entered a 3 story building jam packed with counter upon counter filled with any electronic device you could think off. Anything from tiny usb memory card readers to 3 foot remote control helicopters, LCD TVs, cable connectors, and what I had made the trip for...a whole floor of cell phones. New and old, legit and counterfeit, and more counterfeit phones. After perusing what had to be 30 cases of phones, and trying to ask for prices, I settled on a touch screen LG KP500 'Cookie'. After trying to bargain fairly heavily, I was told by one vendor in English, "I don't like you." And was denied my phone of choice. After trying to bargain at 3 more vendors, with none of them budging more than 50 RMB, I finally found a vendor that offered me a "2 day old' phone for 200 RMB off and finally another 50 RMB discount. I walked out with a phone for about $100, hope it doesn't break...
