"Just like New York!"

Here's a generalized statement for ya:

Sometimes Chin.ese people latch onto foreigners. This is how I ended up at last night's random activity of the day:

a fashion show in the fancy schmancy new mall outside of town...

with my new co-worker/boss/leech, Nini...

Nini has a lot of money and wanted to show me that she does indeed, well, have a lot of money.

Her 13 year daughter and I had an interesting conversation on the walk back to their apartment. They took a moment to stop and show me the "most richest apartments place in Hangzhou." They told me the pricest of the units per km yadda yadda and said that is why the new mall was built in that part of town.

I replied with, "wow, it is ok for people to have that much money, but they should also give to the poor people. It's ok to have a lot of money, but that shouldn't be most important."

Her daughter looked at me like I had told her to eat her boogers for breakfast.

"We don't do that in China," she said, obviously thinking.

"Well, you should."

And we continued walking in the drizzling rain back to her home.

The fashion show was fun because I got to spend time with Chinese people, go into their home, hang out with them, and share an activity together. But when people latch on to me or flaunt money at me because they think all Americans are rich and money obsessed, this is sad to me.

Being at the show was fun, but the excessive flaunt of money left an awkward taste in my mouth. Especially since I recently learned that the lady who is in charge of cleaning our dorm building makes less than 5 USD a day.

walk slow. xoxo.