Brrrrrr!

It’s getting colder every day. This morning, it was 37ºF at 8:00, and the weather reports show that it will continue to get cooler. All of my winter clothes and coats are in my air shipment that has not yet been sent from the U.S. (the logistics company couldn’t release my shipment until I got my residence and work permits; they should be releasing my shipment this week). The only coat I have is a mid-weight corduroy jacket. I thought I was going to get to Xi’an back in late September or early October—plenty of time to get my shipment before winter would arrive. Right.

Thus, today’s adventure was coat shopping. I had scoped out the coat selection at Lotus last weekend, so today I went to the nearby Golden Eagle shopping mall—four floors of clothing, accessories, house wares, electronics, cosmetics, and everything you’d find at a typical department store in the U.S. The mall was set up like a department store too. Each floor had an open layout with sections for the different stores; there weren’t separate enclosed stores—one store flowed into the next. The only other noticeable difference between this mall and those in the U.S. was the abundance of store personnel. Each store/sales area probably had three or four sales associates working an area the size of a two-car garage.

I looked at a few coats and realized I was way out of my league—the cheapest coat I found was 1,200RMB (about $190), and this was just a glorified windbreaker. One of the stylish coats I liked was 5,000RMB (more than what I paid for my iPhone). So after walking through each floor, I went to Lotus.

As I was looking at the coats in Lotus, a very helpful (but non-English-speaking) sales person came over to help me. She showed me some really awful coats (I should have gotten a picture—think bright red with sequins, and then pink and white floral with a fur collar). Through hand gestures, I indicated I wanted a coat with a hood, so she brought me over to a rack and pulled out a nice looking navy blue ski-type coat, helped me put it on, and then led me to a mirror. It was a nice looking coat, so I asked her how much it was (in Chinese!)—it was 599RMB (about $95). The coat was nice, but not $95 nice, so I pulled out my Chinese phrase book and asked if she could show me something cheaper. We went to the 299RMB (about $48) rack and I found this:

My new coat. Back in my room at the Citadines.

The coat has a hood.

When I tried it on at the store, the sales woman asked my if I was American. I told her I was, and she got very excited and showed me the coat’s tag. 

The real deal?

Yes, it is a “Playboy” bunny coat. I didn’t know Playboy made coats. Could this be a knock-off? Is the bunny’s head facing the correct direction? Not being familiar with this particular brand, I have no idea. So we’ll just say that I have a Playboy bunny coat. I wish it had a fuzzy white tail on the back though. ;)