In LA

Don’t you just hate it when “Falling ObjectG” happens?

It’s been cold here in Beijing, but often not cold enough to justify wearing my long wool coat. So I was very happy when Lisa and I were walking down a houtong (that’s a picturesque old Beijing alleyway) and happened upon a shop that sold some nice looking spring jackets. I bought one for 89RMB, which is about $11 US.

The next day, we were outside, and it was cold, so I zipped up the jacket. the zipper came apart below the zipper-head-thing, and then it was very difficult to unzip the jacket. I tried again and the same thing happened. So we went back to the houtong to the shop to see if we could exchange the jacket.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have any other instances of the jacket in that size and color, but they did say they could fix it, so I handed it over. The saleswoman grabbed a large padlock off a shelf, and proceeded to bang it on the zipper in the next room. She then brought the jacket back and carefully demonstrated that the zipper now worked. I put on the jacket, and as soon as I zipped it, the zipper separated below the zipper-head, and was very difficult to unzip (she helped). She said she knew just how to fix it, and took the jacket into the next room, saying something about it needing soap.

She came back, with the zipper showing signs of having been rubbed with a bar of soap. I put the jacket on, zipped, the zipper came apart, she took it into the back room again, said more soap was needed and it’d be “better than new” and “would never break”, and then brought back a jacket with an even soapier zipper. This time when I tried the zipper, the zipper-head came apart and a few little pieces of metal fell to the floor. While I worked to unzip the jacket using the remaining pieces of the zipper-head, the saleswoman asked Lisa how to tell foreigners that a pickpocket has followed them into the store, and Lisa spelled “pickpocket” for her on the back of a receipt.

After we rejected the suggestion of another round of soap-therapy, the saleswoman said it’d have to go to the tailor to get fixed, but that we’d have to pay for it, and that it might cost up to 5 RMB (around 60 US cents). She also said I shouldn’t go with her to the tailor, because he’d see the foreigner and raise the rate. So Lisa and I went and got some food.

When we returned, the jacket was ready, the zipper-head had been replaced, the zipper worked fine, the repair cost only 3 RMB, and all was well. It was a hassle, but an amusing one. I like the jacket, and planned to keep it even with a non-functional zipper, so am happy with the outcome.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 at 3:17 pm and is filed under China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.