Chinese Malls, Chinese Driving, and Chinese Food

So, the malls here are amazing. They're unbelievably large. And when I say unbelievably large, I literally mean UNBELIEVABLY large. And crowded. Think of Baybrook Mall or Barton Creek during the weekend before Christmas. That's how it is every day here, times 15. Our group gets separated at Sha Tin (our main mall) every time without fail. So, Sha Tin has like a network of malls that are all connected and branch off one another. We would have to tackle the malls one level per day if we wanted to even attempt to go shopping, because there are seven levels of about seven malls that are all connected. Also, the stores are micro stores. I don't even know how they sell and restock because some stores only have two racks of clothes, because that's all they can fit. Therefore however, there are TONS AND TONS of stores in the mall, because they're all so tiny. Only about six people could fit into some of them. They also have super nice high-end stores here, and lots of brand names we have in America, like Forever21, H&M, GAP, Burberry, etc. I've noticed that the Chinese are quite fashionable. They don't wear sweats or Nike shorts and T-shirts. The women all wear dresses/skirts and nice blouses and heels. I don't know how they can do so much walking in heels!

The markets here are also really cool; I really enjoyed going. They have all kinds of markets: food markets, souvenir markets, knock-off brand markets, junk markets, everything! We went in this one place with fresh fish, and in the picture below, you could still see the heart beating of the fish on the right that are sliced in half.

Fish market

Squid

Markets

The drivers here are outrageous. We quickly found out that pedestrians do not have the right of way here, except to their death. Cars don't slow down for people in the streets and EVERYONE honks. Constantly. Even if nothing wrong is going on. They must just truly enjoy honking, and for about 15 seconds straight sometimes. The drivers are also really aggressive (or really careless, I don't know) and drive super close to other cars/structures/walls/tunnels/people/etc. It goes without saying that taking a taxi ride is usually an experience here....

And lastly, for the most interesting part of this post: the food. So we left for mainland China on Monday, June 24 and stayed until Thursday, June 27. In China they serve and eat food family style, with a big glass turntable in the the middle of the table. So the waiters and waitresses just bring bowls and plates of food and put them on the turntable and you turn it and get whatever you want and put it on your plate. This may work in China, but for Americans, it is a very inefficient system. Americans are impatient and love food, so it became a debacle trying to decide which way to turn the table and how fast to turn it and so on. And we had four days and four lunches like this. The very first plate of the very first meal we had in mainland China consisted of buffalo tongue, a fish with scales still on it, some animal's ear, stomach, chicken head and feet, and a big bowl of twig soup. Ummm, yeah, I ate rice....

The lunches got slightly more appetizing, and we also became slightly more adventurous and willing to try things. I mainly stuck to the rice, noodles, veggies, and pork and fish. I'm not a picky eater at all back home, and I really thought I would be adventurous with my food while in Asia, but when you see a chicken head on a plate in front of you, still with a beak and everything, staring at you and a fish head with eyes still in it, being adventurous remains just a thought.