luna
i am now the proud owner of one beautiful spanish-born, shanghai-raised acoustic/electric guitar.
i'm really glad i decided to go along with the plan to take to the streets with my grandparents' birthday cash, bless them, and shop around the music stores in shanghai, which, by the way, are all concentrated on one street by some bizarre anomaly of economic theory. we arbitrarily wandered into a store labeled something like "international music", or something to the effect of requiring the salespeople to greet people in both chinese and english. and indeed, we were met by a guy named kevin who was super short, had a sleekly brown-dyed bowl of hair which completely engulfed his face, and asked me if i spoke english, in pretty damn good english. *sigh* i guess i'll always look like a foreigner no matter where i go.
i'm still very pleasantly surprised at the ease of which we got such a killer deal. i'd gotten used to all the haggling in chinese markets but it seems like the prices just talked themselves down this time. this solid-top acoustic with a piezoelectric pickup wound up in my hands for 2350 renminbi, which is in the neighborhood of 350 US dollars, along with the locking hard shell case, three packs of strings including a sweet set of 13's, a strap and all that junk.
lastly, i have to share the story of the hapless european couple (still of unknown origin, though my sister thought they sounded spanish) who came in in a state of emergency after having left their guitar in the trunk of a taxi. they basically just kidnapped the most decent-looking cheapish Yamaha for a pretty good price and ran off, but not before i overheard some of their conversation in various shades of colorfully-accented English.
"This case is scratched! Can we have another?"
"..."
[in chinese] "OK, I don't feel like going downstairs again, let's just give them a discount on that case..."
"All right, how about you take that case and we'll give you a discount?"
"Yeah-eyah-eyah!"
well now...all the fun that remains is for me to get this baby hauled over to america as a paticularly large and cumbersome carry-on. hopefully i don't leave it in the baggage compartment of the plane...according to the experience had by
aarushi_sothere and her friend on their DC "road trip by plane," lost stuff on airplanes is even harder to track down than stuff on taxis... i'll probably end up hugging it to my knees on the last flight again. see you folks in a couple of days, most likely. :)
i'm really glad i decided to go along with the plan to take to the streets with my grandparents' birthday cash, bless them, and shop around the music stores in shanghai, which, by the way, are all concentrated on one street by some bizarre anomaly of economic theory. we arbitrarily wandered into a store labeled something like "international music", or something to the effect of requiring the salespeople to greet people in both chinese and english. and indeed, we were met by a guy named kevin who was super short, had a sleekly brown-dyed bowl of hair which completely engulfed his face, and asked me if i spoke english, in pretty damn good english. *sigh* i guess i'll always look like a foreigner no matter where i go.
i'm still very pleasantly surprised at the ease of which we got such a killer deal. i'd gotten used to all the haggling in chinese markets but it seems like the prices just talked themselves down this time. this solid-top acoustic with a piezoelectric pickup wound up in my hands for 2350 renminbi, which is in the neighborhood of 350 US dollars, along with the locking hard shell case, three packs of strings including a sweet set of 13's, a strap and all that junk.
lastly, i have to share the story of the hapless european couple (still of unknown origin, though my sister thought they sounded spanish) who came in in a state of emergency after having left their guitar in the trunk of a taxi. they basically just kidnapped the most decent-looking cheapish Yamaha for a pretty good price and ran off, but not before i overheard some of their conversation in various shades of colorfully-accented English.
"This case is scratched! Can we have another?"
"..."
[in chinese] "OK, I don't feel like going downstairs again, let's just give them a discount on that case..."
"All right, how about you take that case and we'll give you a discount?"
"Yeah-eyah-eyah!"
well now...all the fun that remains is for me to get this baby hauled over to america as a paticularly large and cumbersome carry-on. hopefully i don't leave it in the baggage compartment of the plane...according to the experience had by
aarushi_sothere and her friend on their DC "road trip by plane," lost stuff on airplanes is even harder to track down than stuff on taxis... i'll probably end up hugging it to my knees on the last flight again. see you folks in a couple of days, most likely. :)