Hello underwear!

A Chinese market is basically unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been before—especially somewhere like the frenzied Silk Street market on the east side of town. We were there tonight, checking on the ever-changing stock of DVDs and seeing if the spring load of t-shirts was in yet, and as the Chinese salespeople assaulted me with cries of everything from “Hello, look-a, look-a!” to “You need silk scarf?” to “Buy for your girlfriend!,” I found myself hearing one phrase that struck me as especially strange:

“Hello underwear!”

Sure it’s meant to be “Hello, sir, would you like to buy some underwear?,” but it comes out as two words, one phrase: Hello underwear! And I chuckled.

Shaking my head, I thought to myself as I eye-balled the selection of North Fake jackets, mass-produced Chinese dongxi [junk] and over-priced silk products from ties to scarves to Japanese kimonos, where else on earth could I hear the words hello and underwear yelled at me as I walk through a public place, fully clothed and minding my own business? Nowhere. Nowhere else. I asked my companions if they too found this odd and if they could think of any other scenario where this might happen besides here in China at a bilingual market full of vacationing foreigners and Chinese salespeople ripping them off left and right, and they couldn’t. I don’t think it’s out there.

I let the scene sink in and smiled, said another bu yao, xie xie [no, thanks] and was on my way. It’s moments like these I really want to remember, because chances are, I’ll never hear anyone yell “hello underwear!” ever again.