silk dresses…seams of messes

I took the wedding dress I had made in Beijing to a US tailor this week. This is the last time I trust sweat shop labor! I kid, I kid. My wedding dress looks suspiciously similar to this Vera Wang from spring 2008 collection (minus the silver dohicky and the fan thing in the front). Wait! I just realized my wedding is in the fall of 08. OMG it’s out of style!

Obvs kidding. Anyway, my mom and I rushed  the dress to our local tailor, a sassy Bolivian-American named Tancy. This followed an all out ma- freak out when I tried it on at home. I had known it wasn’t perfect. I admit, my love for the dress and my struggle and triumphs over the process of commissioning it in Beijing had blinded me to its faults. I was wearing lover’s goggles. Tancy, however, was not. She squinted at the seams of the lining. “Oh yeah, I’ve dealt with Chinese-made dresses before.” The seams were sloppy near the top, but it was a relatively easy fix, she said. Also, the Chinese tailor had sewn the v-neck shut at the bottom, and the seams on the boddice in the front were sloppily pleated. It was looking all kinds of matronly when I tried it on. I stood on a pedestool in front of her big mirror triad and held out my arms. Tancy undid the offending stitching, pushed the material here, stuck a pin there and we all breathed a sigh of relief. It was fixable. Two days later, after perusing bridal mags, which are full right now of various neoclassical, empire waist A-line styles, my ma and I rushed back to Tancy with a new idea. The dress was missing a certain…oomph. We told her we wanted to add We a band of some sort under the bodice. Tancy ran to the back of the store and came out with a thick, long satin ribbon. She pinned it under the bodice, made a knot at the back, and let the remaining fabric run down the back of the dress. I’ll post a pic when it is complete next month. My goggles are off…but I still love this dress.

Club Coco Conspiracy

All of the American foreign teachers were out at dinner with the English Club, a group of Chinese students. Through the pleasant chit chat, I caught my colleagues shooting side glances at each other. Hmmm. Secret eye conversations. I sensed something was going on. And, I decided that Mark and I weren’t wanted there. We were interrupting something. This dinner was defo members only, and we forgot our members only jackets. Secrets! Lies!

I was right. Something was going on. I returned to my apartment, seething, feeling like an outsider. Feeling like I’d been rejected at the cool kids’ table in 7^th grade, which I so was, then. I pouted. And then the three other female teachers busted down my door. With a pink feather boa, and a t-shirt that said “Juliana, Bride to Be” on the back, and “Bride” in Chinese pinyin and characters on the front. “We’re going to Club Coco!” they yelled.

Wow, did I feel like an idiot. A real jerk. Gaaaaaaa! The fact is, I hate secrets. When I sense them around me, my mind goes haywire, firing the most bizarre theories in million different directions. And the worst thing is, I believe them all.

As usual I was wrong! We were off to Club Coco for a big fat Chinese bachelorette party. Coco is possibly Qinhuangdao’s only (non brothel?) club, just around the corner from the university. The club is a big glass-and-neon box, and I’d always wondered what it was like, on the inside. Unsurprisingly, it looked like the inside of a glass-and-neon box. I looked around for Don Johnson. A DJ blasted Chinese, Russian and English techno-pop. Dancing gay Chinese men! Table tops illuminated different colors of the rainbow. Shiny black and red and silver surfaces, tinged with glitter. Behind us, eight Chinese men and their prostitute in a VIP lounge. A blue-illuminated fiber-glass catwalk, dance floor, dance cubes. Two stripper poles. A PG-13 stripper, clothed in hot shorts, stripper boots and an itty bitty top, maneuvering. Stick-thin Go-go dancers, in cargo pants and sports bras. We sat down at a booth and ordered. Twelve Budweisers, a pitcher of booze, a plate of fruit and two plates of sunflowers seeds. Before long, we were drinking with our new, somewhat possessive boyfriends in their VIP area. Shot after shot of whiskey and tea. I screamed and they laughed. Sparks flew as a fireworks display popped; it had scared the bejesus out of me. Fireworks? At a bar? They ordered and lit three more fountains. Our only communication was “Ganbei!” which is like saying cheers, but an intense cheers, because you have to drain your cup. My favorite display of the night: a huge vase full of ice, with fireworks in the middle, and multi-colored champagne mixed drinks sticking out of the ice for us to drink, following the fireworks display, of course. I also met some Italians, Franco and Francesca, whom I forced to dance with me. Franco and I yell-talked over the outlandish decibels blasting from the speakers: “YOU’RE A WRITER” “YEAH, SORT OF!” “I’M A WRITER, TOO” “YEAH?” “SORT OF” “WHY ARE YOU HERE?” “NO JOBS IN ITALY.” “OH.”

I love dancing. And I loved dancing with our Chinese boyfriends, because, they were so harmless in their dance moves. Their main move included some extremely dorky marching. No grinding or groping or otherwise creepy ogling. But yelling. Lots of yelling “Eh eh eh eh!” and pumping fists in the air. I was the Queen of Club Coco, on her blue illuminated cube throne, directing the marching chorus of “Eh eh eh eh!” from above the crowd. It was a good night.

Web site for brides-to-be with OCD

I spent all day yesterday making a Web site for our upcoming nuptials in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I poked around online and even signed up (and then immediately canceled) a couple of free host spots. Whenever I started to build a free site, I got annoyed at the lack of customization options and the barfy templates. Mark and I didn’t want lots of quizzes and polls or a countdown and roses everywhere; we wanted something simple-yet-stylish and not cheesy that would communicate en masse our travel details and and just a bit about us for fun. I needed a Web site company that understood.

I Googled a bit more and found an awesome Web site that actually reviews the 30 or so companies that offer a wedding Web site. The sites it reviews typically cost something after a free trial. But the costs seemed really reasonable. After browsing around that site, I settled on weddingwindow.com, which came highly recommended by a number of publications, including InStyle. I love the clothes in InStyle, and am even having a knock-off designer dress made from a picture I found on its pages. So I figured I’d trust their taste in Web sites, too. And I have to say-Wedding Window is lovely in every way. If I took a test on Web design I would get a 0 percent. So, if I can figure it out, anyone can. It has clean, stylish templates for those of us who aren’t keen on wedding Web sites dripping with wedding cliches. It has options for the cheesy romantics, too. (not that there’s anything wrong with that )Nothing is set in stone. You can choose your templates and color schemes and change them later. You can activate and de-activate pages easily. At first, I didn’t see the “Manage Pages” tab, and I wrote an e-mail to customer service asking where I could get rid of a few pages (like “Our story” and “From our Hearts,” etc.). I found the Manage Pages tab, of course, about one minute after I emailed customer service. But still, within hours, customer service e-mailed me back. And I’m in China. I mean, I had e-mailed them in the middle of the night…unless they’re in India or something. I purchased a six-month package then and there. It cost $59, so about $9.80 a month. The price per month goes down as the time you need the site goes up. Being in China, it is expensive to mail international letters. So, we are going to send out an e-mail save the date really soon, and the site offers this service for included in the cost, with a design for your e-save the date that matches your Web site. Here is our site.

Wedding dress: go

When I set out on my quest for a wedding dress, I had visions of a dress that classic, simple and light enough for a wedding in Mexico, but didn’t look like a slip or a nightgown either. Designers of the world, is that so much to ask? Are there really women out there willing to wear whatever you, designer, decided to pile on? There must be or you wouldn’t buy magazine ads. What is up with all the overpriced, blaring white, lace-and-tulle-and-glitz crusted barf piles?

That became my attitude, and I admit my attitude was bad. But I was losing hope; and I had precious few wedding magazines to look through, the ones our families kindly sent our way. I perused a wedding dress mall in Beijing that was full of gigantic cupcake dresses, which are en vogue with the Chinese gals. No luck there. I found a tailor, and that gave me hope; the prices seemed reasonable, cheaper than off-the-rack options. But what would I have made?

I hit the internet, and luckily found a great selection of dresses to peruse. I want to recommend www.brides.com. It has an awesome gallery of wedding dress pics, and the pics include front and back shots, both close up and far away. I found what I was looking for in the Vera Wang Spring 2008 gallery. Don’t all the model brides look like starving zombie bride-sticks?: “Feeed usss.” Actually, I thought many of these dresses from the collection were unflattering for “normal” women, and even made the zombie bride-sticks look fat. All those pleats right at the waist? C’mon. The mermaid look? C’mon. Good solely for hip magnification. I wanted an empire-waist fitted A-line, a dress cut that is a friend to all women. I found one I thought pretty and took a gamble.

And now, after all that searching, hemming and hawing, and bitching, and many trips to Beijing, I picked up my wedding dress from Yashow Market. It is similar to this dress.

Except, without that big silver doohicky and the little piece of material fanning up in front. Also, I have boobs and hips and an actual waist, unlike the yard stick. Eat a steak, woman. And a dinner roll or five. My dress doesn’t have the big burst of volume in the back. It has a very slight train. I actually thought all of that material in the back was interesting and lovely, but not really in sync with a casual affair in Mexico. And I’m sure I’d trip on it. I made the back dramatically lower, but not, you know, slutty. My dress is lined with silk and has a top layer of silk organza. It does have the cool organza bow and some extra flowy organza attached to the bow. I can’t stop saying organza. Silk organza. What a great word. I added an extra lining because even after those two layers were sewn the overall look was nightgown-ish and thin. The English speaking tailor assistant and I fought about the third layer, for some reason. We basically yelled at each other and then she hung up on me. But after the dust settled, the dress was perfectly lined and I paid an extra $14 for the fabric and work. The whole thing took five or so fittings and I’m overall so satisfied. These tailors are amazing. I showed them a picture and they cut the fabric and produced a dress without even a pattern.

That being said, the process wasn’t a cinch. Bargaining for a big purchase in China isn’t friendly and it isn’t pretty. It’s kind of like a war combined with psychological dance. If any Beijing or expat-bride-to-be-on-a-budget reads this, I would advise you to ask about the price per meter of each different silk you are interested in. Have an assistant measure you and tell you exactly how much fabric you need for what you want. Have them then make an itemized list of exactly what you are paying for. Then, try to beat down the price on each item: work and different fabrics. Maybe even do this at two or three places to get an idea before you settle. Stage a few walk offs. I told the sales girl that another place had agreed to make my dress for half as much as she quoted me, which wasn’t true. And then I walked away to think about the offer. When I came back, she lowered the price by another $30. I didn’t do the itemizing strategy for my wedding dress, but I have ordered two more dresses and and this saved major cash. Because, as a foreigner, you are especially subject to higher prices than what a local person would pay. Automatically, the price went down on the two dresses I ordered after my wedding dress as it became clear with some itemizing that the tailor’s assistant was doing some interesting “rounding up” and also quoting me for a silk lining when I said I wanted a cheap whatever lining.

Once the price is settled, you have to do a lot of nitpicking. If there is a seam crooked here or a funky pleat there, I told them to fix it and exactly how it should be fixed. They then told me if what I wanted was feasible or not; usually, it was. This was a downside only in that it was weird for me as I’m not used to pointing out mistakes and making demands. It was good for me though, too. I learned how to better say what I want, without posing it as a wimpy question. But I always found something nice to say to the tailor before I told him to redo something else.

And I had a lot of moments after a fitting where I thought it looked like crap and I would utterly freak out and get really down about it on the bus ride home. That felt incredibly lonely; I needed my mom and sisters in those moments. I think we will go fake wedding dress shopping as soon as I get home, just for fun. Actually, even though I have my dress, I’m really excited about that. And looking forward to being with my family again. I better not see a dress I like better, though!

If there was a problem, by the next fitting, the problem was typically fixed or vastly improved upon. I should mention that not included in the amazing low low price of the dress ($170) was all the money and time I spent going back and forth to Beijing; by bus it’s about three and a half hours away. This was a fun part of the process for me, though. I love going to a big city. I got to travel by myself in another country, and one of my favorite things to do is just zone out on a train or a bus with a book or music or a magazine or pad of paper with a mug of coffee.

When I was with Mark (he never came with me to the tailor, don’t worry) or anyone else, we would make a point to get a great lunch. Because there is no decent western food in Qinhuangdao, except for McDonald’s, we always go to Grandma’s Kitchen near the embassies for down home diner food. I had an excuse to stay in a Hutong hostel, shop at antique and various other markets. And any excuse to shop puts a smile on my face.

I’m really spoiling myself and also having my own version of this dress made.

Except, sans those pleats around the waist that will make me look six months pregnant. C’mon, Vera! Get a clue.

For laughs, check out this site: www.uglydress.com.

Hello from Qinhuangdao

I have suddenly found myself quite busy. Classes are in full swing, and I picked up a few extra: a night class that meets twice a week, and a class of Korean ladies who want to learn English twice a week. I have a lot of fun with the ladies. Their English is really basic, so we do a lot of acting out of dialogues, which they find highly entertaining. And I act out words they don’t understand, during which time they are practically rolling on the floor. Ah, to entertain so easily.

In other news, my writin’ pals and I are coming out with our third issue of Spry (www.sprymag.com). It’s been tough to keep updating the site. Editor-in-chief Lauren is finishing grad school and working full time. But no matter. As we’re winos, our site is sure to age like wine. That is, it will only get better.

In wedding news, I’m going to Beijing for a second time to look into getting a wedding dress made. Hopefully, this will actually result in a dress. Hopefully, it will turn out like the pictures I’m bringing with me. (Vera Wang knock-off, anyone?) It’s hard to know what to do here, as a lot of the good information is on the Web, but in Chinese. I’m going to have it made at Yashow market, which is a place a lot of foreigners go for gifts, clothes, and shoes and assorted tchotchkes and fakes. The fourth floor is full of tailor shops. The shop I picked has bolts anad bolts of silk to choose from, and I like being able to pick the fabric. Plus, the worker there speaks English. The ready-made Chinese-style western wedding dresses I’ve seen are a bit, shall we say…much? Like cupcakes topped with glitter and lace. Blegh!

Also…I will be sending an e-mail shortly to those who are considering coming with us to Mexico with info on places to stay. I don’t have my save the date cards done. I am a bad wedding planner so far. Sorry…I’ll get on it!

Meanwhile, I did a really interesting activity in a few classes called “create a country.” The activity alleges that the students’ country randomly gives away a chunk of land for 20,000 folks (stress imagination). Then, the students have to create a government and laws for the new piece of imaginary land. Interestingly, about ¾ of my students picked socialism, and ¼ democracy for this “new” country. One group (students in a class of 35 were in groups of two to four students each) also picked communism and one, anarchy. Then, ¼ of students thought there should be censorship (especially on violent and pornographic material) and ¾ thought there should be none. The death penalty was about half and half. One group thought it better to cane people for their wrong doings ala Singapore, whilst another preferred lifelong work sentences. No guns in the new country. Environmental laws would be very, very strict. Interesting, indeed!

On the prowl for a wedding dress in China

Mark and I have decided on Mexico for our wedding next fall. While I’m here in China, I want to pick up a wedding dress. Everything is made in China anyway, so why not? I tried on dresses in Qinhuangdao a few months ago and found them all ridiculous. Western-style dresses here have a singular theme: pretty pretty princess. And they are all dripping with bows and crystals and other various bells and whistles attached to layers and layers of material. It’s not just not my style, plus I’m getting married in a really hot place. So, I visited Beijing this weekend for a few days with Candace, a fashion-minded Bostonian who teachers at my university. Our goal: find a dress for my November wedding, or at least find out more about how to get the wedding you want in China. She gave me the dose of enthusiasm I desperately needed for dress shopping. I’d absolutely been dreading the process without my ma and sisters around.

The bus we took from Qinhuangdao to Beijing was cozy and ridiculous; the driver had the unfortunate habit of blasting really bad Chinese techno and talking on his cell phone while changing lanes with reckless abandon. And also, hitting his horn at will, which was possibly the loudest and most jarring horn I’ve ever heard. We arrived unscathed and checked into our hostel.

Candace had heard that foreigners often had dresses made at Yashow Market, and so off we went. Immediately, we were distracted by all the wonderful and lovely spring coats displayed in the place. After heated bargaining sessions, I got a red trench and Candace a funky peacoat. It was time for action, however. And so we found tailors on the third floor. They said they could make a wedding dress for 900 RMB, which is about $126. The suits and dresses displayed at the place were impeccable, plus the employee spoke perfect English.The only problem? They have lots of silks there, but my dress also has lace and tulle. Hmmph. We got mani-pedis and plotted our next move.

That night, we hit the town in our new coats. At a club, I learned the secret of the foreign community. They bring their own material to the tailor, who makes their clothes for half as much. We decided to go and try to find material for the dress that I wanted the next day.

The next morning, Candace and I found a wedding district in Beijing. I tried on perhaps 10 dresses, but again, they all had the same theme as in Qinhuangdao: pretty pretty princess.The dresses were also priced at about 2,000 RMB or more, and the material wasn’t the best. The tailor option was looking better and better. We ditched the stores and set off instead in search of material for the dress. We found a textiles district, after a three-plus hour search. Part of the problem was that we didn’t have a visual on what, exactly, we were looking for. I kept thinking we would find a gigantic, Chinese version of JoAnn Fabrics. That didn’t happen. The market we were looking for is called Mu Xi Wen, and we indeed found it. But, it was the wrong one, a place that sold textiles for upholstery, bedding and curtains. It wasn’t a single place, either. There were two big buildings and then, further down the street, rustic little rows of open stalls, bolts of fabric leaning against the walls.

I didn’t get a dress, but I got the facts, had a great weekend and learned to navigate the city a bit better, and on my own. I’ll visit the city again soon.

Why we don’t go to the bar

Why we don’t go to the bar

Days about Qinhuangdao

We got to do quite a bit of traveling over the holiday. I assure you our day to day life is not quite so exciting. The life of this ESL teacher consists mostly of long periods of boredom, with memorable moments sparking up here and there. Those moments become stories we relay to each other, because there is not much else to do but tell tales. The tales get a lot of mileage and eventually take on a life of their own. Like the Story of the Gut Wrenching Departmental Basketball Game Victory and the Time a Tiger Almost Killed Mark in Harbin.

At my university we all live in on-campus, block-style apartment buildings. They are pallid green with bars over the windows and seven stories high. In our apartment building, foreign teachers are stacked on top of each other in a neat vertical row, with Mark and I on the first floor, Eric on the second, etc. etc. I suppose we are easy to keep track of this way. We borrow each others’ books, butter, and DVDs. We relay important news. Food – especially dairy products – is especially newsworthy subject matter: “I saw cheese yesterday at the Korean store,” or, “I found tomato paste yesterday!” There are eight foreign teachers here, enough for a decent party, which we had, Saturday night. We sat in the little glass room meant to dry laundry at the front of the 4^th story apartment, drank wine and smoked cigars.

I’d say there are two other groups of foreigners bumming around Qinhuangdao. One consists of younger Europeans and assorted Americans who mostly work at an English language school downtown. They go to the bar. A lot. The other group consists mostly of divorcees, mostly British gentlemen into their 40s and 50s. This group meets at cafes and discusses the state of the world. Eh, I get the feeling that most men are here to get a girlfriend. Even the cab drivers have asked English-speaking male friends (who happen to also speak Chinese), “Are you here to get a Chinese girlfriend?” Whether or not this is their intention, my friend Julia has it on good authority (hers) that this happens for all willing newbies approximately two weeks after arrival.

Mark and I typically don’t go to the bar. It’s expensive, for one thing, and you get a lot of unwanted attention when out on the town. There are lots of stares. The drinks embolden the locals’ desire to get to know you. We are an oddity and a rarity here in Qinhuangdao. I don’t mind chatting, but when the inevitable question, “Can we be friends?” comes along, I cringe. It sounds like an earnest question. But, local English speakers likely hope to befriend you so you can help them to practice. I am not here to spread English all over town; I’m here to help my students in and out of class. How can I say, “No,” or “I feel a little funny about being asked that question,” or even lie and say “I’m too busy to make more friends.” The stranger is usually so…intense and absolutely insistent that I befriend them that it just plain weirds me out. My American tendency to be polite usually leads me to say I don’t remember my phone number, which is pathetic and true. “It’s OK,” they say, “Put my number into your phone and then call me.” This has happened several times, but thankfully, the next day, the stranger is shy again, not drinking any more, and doesn’t call. And I feel like a heartless jerk for being so relieved.

And so, we stay in a lot. I try to write on a regular basis, which sometimes actually happens. I cook on our one-burner electric stove. I got to the gym. I plan and teach my lessons. Next weekend, I am going to go to Beijing to look into getting a wedding dress made there. Thankfully, Candace, a fashion-minded Bostonian, wants to go with me.

We all look forward to spring, when sidewalk barbecues will last all night.