Shoe shopping in China

Shopping in China is no easy task; it requires a lot more strength, stamina and power of mind than a lazy afternoon at the mall would be. For Kyle and I both, it is in those chaotic moments of frustration and confusion that our character is truly tested, sometimes we arise victorious and sometimes a day at the shops proves too great a foe for us to handle.
No 2 occassions express the rise and fall of our emotions during a shopping experience more than Kyle's trip to Carrafour in our second week in China and our trek across Beijing yesterday in pursuit of shoes.

Kyle's grocery shopping efforts will be a story left for another day's writing, but yesterday's experience looked a bit like this: We had big plans to find a massive shoe haven here in Beijing in the hope of finding big sizes for my boat sized feet. I have lived in one solitary pair of shoes for the 5 weeks we have been here and besides the fact that I'm not used to such a small selection, my shoes (and my husband) were beginning to reject the smell that was now coming from my feet. So we checked our travel guide book one last time and left early. Nothing in Beijing is close so after a 40 min bus ride and then 5 stops on the subway to get to San Li Tun, a famous Westerners' area, we were already 2 hours and 4 sweat patches into our day. We walked, took an aimless taxi ride, and then walked some more, all to no avail. Even though we had left at 9h30, by 2pm we hadn’t found anything remotely similar to what we were looking for and no one seemed to know what we were on about when we asked. To say we were feeling despondent is an understatement; my days off are precious and as we were walking my mind was running through a million other ways I would have liked to spend my day. We tried a Korean restaurant but walked out once we discovered it was over priced AND you still had to cook your own food. So we landed up sitting on the side of the road looking like real tourists and feeling very sorry for ourselves. We weighed up our options, and I begged to cut our losses and head home - I was hungry and tired and getting increasingly miserable. Kyle was a little more optomistic though (although no less hungry) and asked that we gave it one more try. We stopped to gain our strength at the Subway bar, which landed up being the closest thing to normal food we’ve had here; and then we set off again. We DID indeed find the shoe shop we were looking for, but even after all that, they didn’t have anything my size that was reasonably priced, and that I would actually wear – 3 non negotiable criteria.
It was indeed looking like I had been right and our whole day would’ve been a complete waste of my day off; until we heard the magical sound of a South African accent in the hallway, telling her friend she had found a place to get big shoe sizes. The voice came from a tall well dressed lady, who I'm sure was not expecting such an excited response by 2 South Africans who popped out of nowhere to eavesdrop on her conversation. Thankfully despite our rudeness and brash behaviour when we spotted her, she was very helpful in giving me the names of some of the nearest places where one might find shoes for people our height and build (she has obviously lived in Beijing for quite some time). Once again, despite the sweat and grime that was covering our body, Kyle was determined to get me my shoes; so we set off again, and this time…hit the jackpot! Make no mistake, even after finding the location of the Yashow Market big shoes sizes were still a rare find, but in the end we walked away with 4 news pairs of shoes for work and leisure and my darling husband put up with 2 hours of shopping with me with no arguments. I even got to practice the little bit of bargaining in Chinese I have become familiar with! We came home after buying some bargain DVD’s on the way out and I was amazed at how happy I felt on the air conditioned taxi ride home, that we had indeed had a successful day afterall.
I am amazed that looking back on our eventful "day out" that if we hadn't got lost and spent 4 hours trying to find the original shoe shop - we wouldn't have met up with that very helpful South African lady. She was the reason we found a place we could afford and so I suppose we're even a little grateful for our detours that allowed us to be successful rather than heading home empty handed.

The moral of the story is two fold, (Kyle's always right) and nothing comes easy here, but if you stick it out it's bound to be worth it. Even something as simple as following a map in a travelers guide to a well known shoe shop could've proved too much for us, but now that we are all rested, showered and have something to show for our efforts, it is nothing more than a distant and slightly humorous memory we grateful to have experienced.