How To Buy A Brand New Made-to-Measure Suit At The Shanghai Textile and Clothing Market

One of the many reasons to come to Shanghai is to have a made-to-measure suit tailored for yourself for the ridiculous price of $200 Cdn. On top of the low price, according to my esteemed physiotherapist, Daifu Enoch Ho, silk is even cheaper than cotton or wool in Shanghai.

So, after about 36 hours of continuous air travel in economy class (i.e., no satisfactory rest), Siobhan was eager to help her dad find a brand new suit that didn't look 70's.

The Shanghai Clothing and Textile Market is located next to the fabulous cable suspension Nanpu Bridge, which spans the Huangpu River separating old Shanghai from basically the brand new city of Pudong. Because their wasn't enough room for a gradual approach to the required height of the bridge platform on the Shanghai side of the river, the designers came up with the novel idea of raising vehicular traffic to platform level by having cars and trucks spiral upwards what seems like three full turns to reach the bridge platform. It's said to be an engineering marvel, having people going in circles.

It's beside this bridge that one finds the market.

So Siobhan and I set out for the Shanghai Metro at the nearby Jing'an Temple stop. It was a pretty hot and muggy day with thousands of people streaming through the subway and lining up at the ticket machines, having finished their work week and with the three day May Day holiday starting the next day. There was no live operator in sight.

The youth hostel had given us a metro map and the directions to get to the market. We lined up at the ticket machine. When our turn came up, Siobhan hit the button for English and started to try to figure out how to make the machine take our money and spit out some tickets. She is pretty computer savvy but the machine just wouldn't cooperate. The people behind us in line all generously had an opinion (in Chinese) of what we should do. But then along came a middle-aged Chinese woman who said in perfect English without a trace of a Chinese accent, "Here, let me help you. Where do you want to go?"

She walked Siobhan through the system which is actually quite simple (for Siobhan and the locals). You find your destination stop on the screen, click on it, wait for the cost of the ticket to appear and type in the number of tickets you want. To get to Nanpu Station costs 4 yuan or about 60 cents Cdn. The machine even accepts Chinese paper money. (Every bill has the reassuring portrait of Chairman Mao on it, the founder of the modern Chinese state.)

"Where did you learn to speak English so well?" asks Siobhan.

"I lived in San Francisco for many years."

It would have been nice to chat with her but she had to run off before I could get out a souvenir to give her of Canada (which we were embarased to learn were all made in China).

"Thank you so much!" said Siobhan smiling sweetly.

Then, there was the matter for finding the right Metro platform(s) on which to catch the necessary trains. Fortunately, Siobhan has eyes like a hawk. (In fact, Dr. Harris, our opthamologist, was so stunned by the accuracy of her eyesight, he accused her of cheating on the vision test.)

In one second, she had spotted the sign for Line 2 to Jongshan Park. Like a sprinter, she was off on the chase, with me struggling to keep up. Long walk, steep escalator, stairs. (How do the disabled cope?) On the platform at last, with thousands of other people! Still, not crowded but sticky and humid underground. The train is coming but we don't know if it's ours. Siobhan runs from one side to the other looking at the subway maps. "It's ours!" she explains, and boards confidently. How the heck did she know?

But she's right. We're heading towards Jongshan Park. At Jongshan Park, we disembark and follow the exit signs whose two Chinese characters we have already learned: a double trident and a square which are pronounced "Chu ko". The word "EXIT" also appears next to the symbols in English.

Up two or three levels is a concourse with shops and illuminated, colour-coded ceiling signs indicating "Line 3 Line 4" in English and Mandarin as well as, just for good measure, enormous colour-coded arrow decals glued to the floor, indicating which tunnel to follow. Our

Line 4 is purple, so it's easy to find.

More stairs, escalators, passages and we are on the platform for Line 3 Line 4. This line is more modern with a glass wall and glass doors between the passengers and the trains.

Here comes a train. There is no wind and little noise beause the train is on the other side of the glass barrier. The doors of the subway cars align perfectly with the glass doors of the barrier. (Is the process remotely controlled?) I move to get on. Siobhan pulls me back. There is a big #3 painted on a stripe aong the length of the subway car.

"It's Line 3." The look on her face is "Like duh, Dad!"

Siobhan thinks she has figured out the Metro map. The line map is in English and Chinese above the glass doors. Through the use of shading of stations the train has already passed, and the YOU ARE HERE symbol, you are supposed to be able to deduce, according to Siobhan, the direction of the train by discovering what is the next stop. However, the circular path of the #4 train is counter-clockwise. I feel it should be clockwise. I remain unconvinced by Siobhan's logic.

In my best Mandarin (which is not the local dialect of Shanghai) I say "Excuse me" to a well-dressed man and ask, "Nanpu Bridge where is?" I show him our little subway map . He casually points to the side of the platorm which Siobhan has already chosen. Siobhan gives me a look which says, "I told you so!"

The car in front of us is fairly crowed and we cringe a little at what the temperature might be inside. But surprise! The glass doors of the barrier open simultaneously with the doors of the subway car and it's cool and air-conditioned inside! But there are no seats and it's not even rush hour yet. So we have to stand by the doors but not too close: a sign in English on the door says, "Beware of the pinching hand!" A picture below depicts a hand.

This line is an elevated railway that runs a couple of stories above the streets below. You can see rows upon rows of relatively new apartment buildings in good shape which incongruously have very long metal poles sticking out from below the apartment windows with a forest of sheets, towels, and clothing all a-fluttering in the breeze.

It's about eight stops to Nanpu Bridge, past the Shanghai Indoor Stadium and the Shanghai Outdoor Stadium, in an semi-circle. The people inside are chatting, texting, sleeping with one person's head on another's shoulder, or just sitting there waiting for their stop. Nobody is reading a newspaper or book. There are no fat people. Everyone is dressed nicely in clothing you would see on the street in Hamilton, Ontario (i.e. western). Some of the women are really leggy and stylish. Siobhan notes that couples often dress in matching shoes or clothes. There are no bald men. There are a few families but always with one child only. The majority of subway riders are young people in their twenties. We get a few stares but otherwise polite disinterest, considering the fact that I am the only man wearing shorts, a loud, striped, shirt, and a baseball cap.

There is no pushing or shoving on entering and exiting because there is a rather long pause at each stop plus plenty of warning in Chinese and English of the approach of the next stop. There are also red illuminated signs in moving English and Chinese writing advising of the approach of the next stop. On top of all that, there is an illuminated sign with a moving light showing the train moving through the various stations of the line. This is subway-riding for dummies 101.

I rather think that, with the air-conditioning and the automated glass doors, and the public toilets at platform level, this Metro beats the Toronto subway hands down.

At last, Nanpu Bridge. We disembark and follow the exit signs. But which one leads to the market? We take one at random. It leads us out (past the sign for "Disabled Elevator") to the street right under the noisy bridge above. There is a bronze statue of a water buffalo next to which people are photographing each other with their ubiquitous cellphones. Siobhan clambers on for a Kodak moment.

Now which way? The problem is solved by a group of blonde foreigners laden with bags of shopping.

"The market is just across the street behind this building," one fellow says.

We follow the cobblestone sidewalk. The vehicular traffic here in Shanghai is awful. Cars, trucks, scooters, buses, none of them respect a red light or the right of way of a pedestrian at a clearly marked crosswalk painted with thick white lines. You are literally taking your life in your hands when you cross the street. No wonder that 600 Chinese are killed every day on the average in traffic accidents across this big country!

As we are walking along the sidewalk, we her beeping behind us. We have to jump aside as a motorcycle passes us very closely on the sidewalk without even slowing down! Fang pi! That was close! Earlier today, we witnessed a near-tragedy as a little girl of about four had to be pulled back by her father from being run over by a taxi turning the corner as the family was crossing the street on the green light.

A long time ago, Kay and I gave Edna Sandoval, our nanny (at the time) who looked after Siobhan and Brendan, a t-shirt to mark the occasion of the start of her driving lessons. The t-shirt said,"If you don't like my driving, stay off the sidewalk!" The t-shirt was funny. This is not.

The market, a five or six-storey building with a one-storey sign in big red English letters, SHANGHAI CLOTHING AND TEXTILE MARKET, appears. Spread out before it are female market vendors on the sidewalks hawking their colourful jewellery spread out on the sidewalk.

We walk past them and up the steps to the very first tailor shop at the corner entrance to the building. It is about the size of your family car, but nicely appointed with a marble floor and wood panelling. I have barely set foot in the doorway when a very pleasant young Chinese woman jumps in my way and asks in English, "You want suit? We make very good suit for you, made-to-measure, very cheap!"

"Okay," we say.

She whips out a glossy brochure full of photos of western men modelling suits of every imaginable western style and in many colours and fabrics. "You find what you like, we make!"

To me, the suits seemed nice but same old, same old.

"You no like? Come, I show you more." She leads us to the other entrance to the store where there are some male mannequins dressed in suits. This is more like it. There are Nehru suits, Chinese suits (similar to Nehru), and a western sports suit in a brown fabric with a sheen and wide eggshell stitching from the lapels to the bottom. That last one was cool, both Siobhan and I thought.

"How much?" we ask.

The woman darts for a small, electronic desk calculator (which is standard equipment at every single stall in the market) and typed in 850 yuan ($140 Cdn.)

What about the black Chinese suit?

That one we could get for only 750 yuan ($125 Cdn.)

"Here, try on! Try on!"

I try on both suit jackets over my bermuda shorts and brown leather sandals and look in the mirror. I like both. Siobhan is not too keen on the Chinese suit and clearly leans toward the brown suit with the pronounced stitching.

What to do? What to do?

While we were dawdling, more customers enter the shop and give us the opportunity to escape and shop around. We walk down to the next building, which turns out to be not part of the market at all. Passing all the street vendors, we are harangued by various touts, especially after Siobhan showed interest in a Longines watch (which was, we were warned in the Lonely Planet travel guide, probably a cleverly-disguised knock-off.)

Back to the market building. We go inside this time. A few metres inside, among stalls selling ladies scarves and dresses, there is another tailor stall, about half the size of your family car, piled high with bolts of fabric. Here, I am literally shanghaied by the proprietress, who takes me by the hand and drags me inside. Here is the Chinese suit again.

"How much?" I ask.

Out comes the calculator. She types 650. I feign disinterest.

"OK, OK," she says, "Cheaper material. You pay 550!" She runs around to the other end of the stall to show me a suit jacket of the same style but of different fabric. "You like?"

I shake my head no.

"OK, OK, you type!" She hands me the calculator.

I type 550 and point to the jacket of superior fabric.

She waves her finger at me and shakes her head no.

I give Siobhan a wink and start walking out of the store. We get a few paces away before the woman comes calling after us, "OK, OK, we make."

Her husband(?), the tailor appears with a tape ribbon and calls out my dimensions which his wife(?) duly notes on paper. At Siobhan's insistence, I make sure that he gets the inseam measurement (normally ignored here) so that the crotch of my pants don't hang down to my knees. I give a deposit in US dollars, get a receipt, and an appointment to come back in two days to pick it up.

I am pretty pleased with myself but Siobhan is not. She asks me if I'm happy with my purchase. She had wanted me to get the brown suit.

A novel idea occurs to me. At the price of $90 per suit, (even Enoch Ho will be amazed) I can afford two brand new, made-to-measure suits. Dawn breaks over Shanghai!!!

When I share this brainstorm with Siobhan, she brightens up. "Let's find somewhere else they make the brown suit," she suggests.

And so we cruise the narrow hallways of the market, searching out the brown suit, unsuccessfully. Finally, it occurs to us to find a tailor who has the same material and can make a suit of the same cut. So we arbitrarily drop into the very next tailor stall we happen upon and try to explain what it is we want. The man is very nice and has lots of fabric samples but not the same brown. In our faltering Chinese and his beginning English, we persuade him to come with us to take a look at the jacket.

We make our way through the market to the corner shop where our tailor-in-tow gets a good look at the material and the style. The people in the corner shop are not pleased.

Back at our current tailor's shop, he thumbs through one fabric sample book carefully and settles upon two or three fabrics to show us. Regrettably, none are even close. Despite many sad remonstrances from the tailor's wife, we part with them, at least, on good terms.

There is nothing left to do but bite the bullet and buy the brown suit at the corner tailor shop, where they give us a pretty icy reception. They accuse with the facts that we bought another suit somehwere else in the market (How did they know?) and tried to copy their jacket. However, when I take out my neck belt-wallet, their attitude softens but their price stays at 850. I give them a deposit. Their tailor takes my measurements. I take the receipt and am leaving the store and walking down the steps with Siobhan toward the bridge when the young woman calls me back.

Apparently, they don't have the brown material either. In fact, the material of the suit on the mannequin is not even brown. It is black. She leads me to the mannequin and folds back the lapel. Sure as shooting, the material underneath is jet black. The mannequin has apparently been standing outside in the sun for a very long time.

Siobhan and I are flabbergasted. I ask if they can make the same jacket in brown of the same shade. The answer is no, they don't have material of that colour. However, she has an alternate suggestion, "You can stand out in the sun until the suit turns brown. No problem!"

Our mouths drop open and we have difficulty not laughing. Finally, I ask for my money back. With a dramatic sigh, the proprietress reaches into her cash drawer and pulls out her copy of my receipt with my deposit attached. I can see she has had a very good day. She has a wad in her hand at least an inch thick.

Outside the market, Siobhan and I confer what to do next. We have been running around in circles like the traffic overhead but nonetheless we decide to give it one more try and then quit the search. We re-enter the market at a different entrance to avoid the corner shop and go into the very first tailor stall. The people are quite friendly. Siobhan hits it off with Shou Li, (?) the pretty-good-English-speaking daughter of the proprietress. We explain the situation and Siobhan takes the tailor over to view the infamous brown jacket. God, what chutzpah the girl has!

She returns in a few mnutes with our new tailor and reports that the corner tailor was ticked off. It is his design and he doesn't want anyone copying it! This view does not deter our new tailor in the least. He whips through his sample book and comes up with a passable facsimile of the colour we sought and then finds us a thread to match for the stitching.

Price? Out comes the calculator. The proprietress starts at 750. I counter with 500. She feigns shock and comes down to 650. I bid 550. She types in 600. I shake my head, yes. Everyone is happy.

We settle on a deposit. The proprietress starts making out the receipt and tells me the suit will be ready Tuesday. Uh-oh! Siobhan says we would be leaving Shanghai on Tuesday but we could pick the finished suit up at 4 pm Monday afternoon. At this point, there is a conference in Chinese among the tailor, the proprieteress, and Shou Li. The proprietress and the tailor do not look happy. Shou Li asks again why we can't wait till Tuesday for the suit. Siobhan explains that we are going to Huangshan Mountain on Tuesday morning. It isn't possible to pick up the suit on Tuesday.

Another conference among the three of them. Finally, Shou Li explains, "Monday holiday. Tailor not want to work. If you want suit for Monday afternoon, must pay 650."

50 yuan overtime for a stat holiday? Seemed reasonable... I said ok and the deal is settled. This time we all sigh.

Did I want slim fit or comfortable, I was asked. I want slim fit but Siobhan puts her foot down: comfortable! The measurements are taken, including the inseam, and this time I have the foresight to request additional material be sown into the back seam of the trousers in case I put on any weight. The tailor is quite agreeable.

Secretly, I am praying that this purchase, on reaching Hamilton, Ontario, will receive the approval of my wife, Kay, and also Heidi Speck, my personal fashion consultant.

Mission asccomplished, Siobhan and I head out of the stall. Siobhan and Shou Li share a fond farewell as well as e-mail addresses. On the stairs outside of the market, unbeknown to us, the street vendor with the Longines watch is lying in wait for Siobhan.

He pounces from nowhere upon us. "I give it to you for 180," he pleads, holding up the watch.

"That's the low price you last bid," I note to Vonnie. "Even if it is fake, it's a pretty nice-looking watch for 30 bucks."

"Nope," says Siobhan, walking determinedly ahead, "it's not really what I want. And besides that, I don't like how the people here have to grovel to us to make a living."

I have to agree. "It's all about how economic power is distributed throughout the world - unevenly. You are a student and may have to wait on tables for a summer job, but, because you come from the West which has had more economic clout in the world than China in the past, you can travel halfway across the world to take a holiday and shop, whereas a student and server here in China would never have the same chance to do the same in Canda, until recently."

"It's not fair," she observes.

We carefully cross the road and, dodging the motorbikes and scooters on the sidewalk, make our way under Nanpu Bridge back to the Metro station.