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TITLE: SHOPPING AND FIREWORKS
LOCATION: DOWNTOWN TIANJIN
MISSION: SLEEP ALL DAY, SHOPP ALL NIGHT
DATE: 2012-01-24
No holiday would be complete without shopping. Tianjin's shopping street is enormous. So long in fact that there are shuttle-buses going back and forth along the street to help people traverse the distances between shopping malls. The goal of this casual little shopping trip was not to buy stuff, but more to orient ourselves among all the latest fashion. It has been almost half a year since Xu Jia (许嘉) came here last time, so an update was in order. I saw this sign of a real estate agent and I just couldn't resist taking a picture. "General Nice Real Estate". We need more names like this back at home. Tonight we were invited to Xu Yang's (许諹) aunt for tea and fireworks. On our way there, we came across a kind of street-food common in Tianjin when Xu Jia was a child but nowadays very rare: 小味儿味儿 ("small flavours"), a platter of small cakes made of steamed rice-flour with fruit toppings. We had to try of course. Xu Yang's aunt and her husband had prepared a pretty bad-ass box of fireworks (49 shots) which was promptly ignited upon our arrival. It is kind of interesting that there is no regulation against launching fireworks in densely populated areas. With apartment buildings as high as they are in most neighborhoods, the fireworks go off right outside peoples windows. I seem to remember a huge Bank of China office somewhere that burned to the ground lately due to reckless placement of fireworks…