Chilling in Haining

It's Sunday, our one-day weekend. Actually, this is the first day I've had totally off since I got here. Most of the rest of our group went off to Hangzhou, a couple of hours away. I could have gone, it sounds like they might hang out with some friends of our Chinese assistant, but my tour goes there next week anyway. So I'm 'stuck' here with my internet on my friend's computer...

This morning, me and the other person who's still here went to the Haining leather factory, which is this huge indoor mall - I mean huge - and it's all leather products. I think there might have been a bank, for people to withdraw money, and I also saw a small convenience store...just so people don't pass out during their leather shopping...other than that, it was just acres of leather. On the way back, it was kind of hard to find a taxi, so while I was waiting out on the street someone offered me a ride in his motorbike. He spoke okay English, and he had a helmet, so I accepted. Surprisingly enough, I made it back safely, so I gave him a tip, and he accepted. I'm never really sure about these things, they have a strange money culture here where sometimes they will get offended if you do these things (tipping isn't customary here.) I heard one time one of our people (actually his assistants of course) got in an argument with a cab driver, and they eventually left the cab. Just so there were no hard feelings though, he left some money on the back seat - and the cab driver saw this, crumpled it up, and threw it back at him. I've also heard a couple of stories about people bargaining, and actually getting lower prices than they bargain for. Like someone saw a leather belt for 120, and asked for seventy, and then the lady offered sixty five...I don't know if that's an expression of shame, or what. I know other places in the world you'd never get away with that...

Anyway, I'm enjoying our kind of rare down time, next weekend we will be off again, and then starting our final assignment...I have a few hours left before I have to give this laptop back to my friend.