Shenzhen part 3 of 4

The warehouse was a five-story building serviced by a series of escalators in the center.

The other four people left us to do some non-warehouse shopping and to get manicures and massages. One of the major draws for many Hong Kongers is the lure of cheap manicures and six-dollar-an-hour massages in Shenzhen. We made arrangement to meet up with them at 5:30 for dinner. So that left Tim, his wife, Annika and me. (My rule is: just get behind Tim and try to stay in his wake.)

The warehouse building was subdivided into hundreds of mini-stores each half the size of my classroom. Each store was packed floor to ceiling with one type of item. One store was all fabric. Another was all die-cast toy cars and trucks. Another was all beach toys. We went up to the fourth floor to the game store Tim had in mind where the lady recognized Tim. Of course.

It was a little like waking up in a parallel universe. Look, there’s Blockus. Same primary colored box, same picture of the game pieces, same lettering. But it wasn’t called Blokus; was called Squares. And there is Rush Hour looking exactly how I know it, except it’s called Smart Driver. I really wanted to understand what I was seeing, but Tim was busy negotiating shipping with the store owner. By the time he was free, I’d decided that it was better not to ask questions you really don’t want to know the answers to.

Tim bought dozens of games for the orphanage with some of the money we had all chipped in. I bought four games for my classroom which cost less than twenty bucks total.

As we were walking out, I mentioned in passing to Tim that we had promised the girls in-line skates for Christmas but had been unable to find them in Hong Kong. Tim said “Hold on a sec, I got a guy.” He led us down to the third floor and sure enough, fifteen minutes later I was walking out with two pairs of skates, two helmets, and two full sets of safety pads. Total cost: just over US$50.