Yiwu:Day Six

I’m behind again, but there is what we did on day six. We started out the day by meeting the old orphanage director, the one who was there when I was. Her name is Lian Lou. We had a great time talking with her about my life and showed her pictures of me at all different ages. We wanted to buy something for the orphanage and our budget was about $500, or 3,400 Yuan (Chinese currency). The people at the orphanage said that the best thing would be to get some diapers. So we went to what we called the “Costco of China”. It was like Costco in that is was a huge, multi-level store with food and household items. I had fun on the moving sidewalks. There were no escalators, so the moving sidewalks were slightly inclined and took you from level to level. The shopping carts stuck to it, you didn’t have to hold it. We just about emptied the store’s supply of diapers. We got all different sizes and kinds. The bags were different sizes, but we ended up buying about 30 packages of diapers. Here we are, strange looking Americans with three carts of just diapers. We drew in many stares and people came over to ask what we were doing. The people at the orphanage were very pleased with what we brought them. After dropping off the diapers, we went back and looked around the Costco-like market. It was called CenturyMart. When you walked in, the aroma of freshly baked bread caught your attention. The smell was coming from a popular bread shop call Bread Talk. We ate lunch there and had “lemonade”. The lemonade was lemon syrup with hot water. Yuck! What also caught your attention was the Crocs display. Crocs’ popularity has grown. When we went to the food department we walked into buckets where live food was swimming. On the floor are buckets of water with eels, fish, turtles, and crawfish. On the walls were the dried ducks and lizards. A bit different from stores in the U.S. Mrs. Lou had been with us this whole time and now said good-bye. It was great to see here again. We drove back to Hangzhou and went to our hotel. We will be here for four nights.
Lianne