anyone who ever said that the shanghai service staff are good must either look obviously very rich, or haven't been to the shops i visited. i visited a big shopping mall the other day. there were more salesgirls than customers there, so i guess you can tell there weren't much bargains there. there was a blouse which caught my eye, and since i was waiting for my housemates to finish their shopping (they CAN shop!!), i asked to try on that blouse. the fitting room didn't have any mirrors inside, and i had to come out to see how the blouse fit. it looked quite awkward, and wearing the blouse made me looked quite hunched. but the salesgirl kept insisting, "it's nice, it's nice..." hiyo, anyone with eyes could see it's ugly. so i pointed out to her that the shoulders part didn't fit very well. and you know what she said? "there's nothing wrong with the blouse, the problem lies with your shoulders." wahahaha... my 2 housemates were relating to me how, when they were shopping for business suits, all the shops priced the suits at over a thousand yuan, but there's always a red sign saying "4 折". that's 60% discount! i guess the heavy price tag is to assure potential customers of the quality, while the discount is to make customers feel happy. and a very funny thing happened. one of my housemates bought a business suit for 600 yuan (!), and upon learning that my housemates are actually singaporeans, the shopkeeper actually tried to introduce her daughter to him. wahahaha... the chinese are so interesting.