Shopping in Dalian

In the past few weeks I've had a couple of interesting shopping experiences in Dalian.

First, I was with a couple of friends at Er Qi, the fabric warehouse, picking out fabric at a stall that sells fabric to make sheets and duvet covers. I had selected a couple prints and asked for one to two meters of each. I then chose two different fabrics at the bottom of the stack, meaning 15 bolts of cloth would need to be moved to get to them. The woman who was helping us looked at me and then looked at the stall owner and the stall owner said "bu," gave a discouraging look and shook her head, meaning no you can't have those. I wasn't about to leave without the fabric so I pretended I had no idea what she was talking about and persisted. The stall owner continued to shake her head and tried to wave us off, but eventually came out behind the stall and helped to get the fabric. We were boggled why it initially wasn't worth the little extra work to make a sale?

Yesterday, I had a similar bizarre shopping experience. I was shopping with friends at a large indoor market. We came to a stall that sold trench coats. There wasn't anybody there, but we figured the owner would be there in a minute as they normally appear out of now where when someone enters their stall, so we walked in and started to try on a couple of jackets. About five minutes later I saw the stall keeper across the way look in on us and get on her mobile phone. I assumed to call the stall owner to come and sell us a jacket. About two minutes later the stall owner from across the way stormed into the stall, rudely grabbed the coat, and stammered something in Chinese which I understood to mean basically "you can't have this jacket and get out of here." So we left. Again, why wouldn't the stall owner want to make a sale, especially to foreigners who she can more easily overcharge?

Some things in China I'll never understand.