More on shopping: the furniture issue

Every little thing can potentially turn into an adventure in China. Actually, cross the "potentially".

As it happens, my parents are coming and, duly expressing filial piety, I set out to look for a sofa-bed. An American friend, who is the resident "fixer", found out about a furniture mall and I set off in her company, since she actually speaks Chinese and knows her way around. So we set off to our destination, somewhere south. We took a taxi and arrived where we were supposed to arrive. It didn't look like a mall at all. There were stores, selling things for the house, but not furniture. Way more basic stuff such as floorings of various types, or toilets.
Then came a stretch of land filled with granite sculptures--Buddahs, bridges, lions, dragons, people playing golf, a winged horse, you name it. No sight of the mall, let alone beds. Finally, a bunch of workmen who seemed to have walked out of a 1950s propaganda who finally directed us to the mall.
There, I looked around and let Sarah bargain in Chinese. Somehow, the information emerged that there was some other place where you could find much cheaper, if lower quality stuff, which suited me just fine for the use I was planning to make of it. Apparently at this point the sellers went on a tirade about how the cheaper stuff was terrible, and it actually gives you cancer, how you're basically going to drop dead just looking at it.

Obviously it didn't work (I'm not even sure they were expecting it to work) and, another taxi ride later, we were at the cheap place, which was basically a great big warehouse full of whatever kind of furniture you can imagine, including ok-looking sofa-beds. I selected one in a pleasing green and brown 1970s design.

Now comes the really fun part. A delivery guy agreed to deliver the sofa-and Sarah and me ipso facto. He cleverly secured the sofa across the tow attached to his electric bike. Then the two of us jumped in and were towed home, probably making the day of everyone who saw us passing by. Finally the delivery guy propped the sofa upside down on his head and carried it five floors.

And now I'm the proud owner of a 1970s-style sofa bed-at a ridiculous price.