Da Fen: City of Art

Da Fen, a beautiful town filled with art and recreations is about 30 driving from our apartment. The buildings in Da Fen are painted pink, orange, and multicolored. While at Da Fen we saw 5 Mona Lisas, 2 Obamas, 3 Ches, 4 Audrey Hepburns, 1 Beckham (spelled Bakeham) and 1 Alan Greenspan (former chair of the federal reserve). We saw hand painted copies of Van Gogh, Degas, Andy Warhol, and Picasso.

While roaming the art filled allies I spied a “hippie store”. Hanging outside were an amazing pair of red flower patterned pants. I tried them on and asked how much they were “zhe ge duo shao qian”. After bargaining and finding another pair of grey capris I wanted I decided I really needed her to cut down her price, so I started to walk out. She immediately dropped the price about 50 yuan, or 7 dollars. We haggled some more but she thought I wanted them “tai pian yi” (too cheap) and I thought she was trying to sell them “tai gui le” (too expensive).

I should mension she was beautiful and was the first Chinese I had ever seen with curly hair, in fact it was so curly she probably couldn’t fit anything bigger than a chopstick threw each curl. After her price did not come down enough, I started to walk out for real. We walked out and around a corner and were inspecting an ice cream cart when she walked up behind us and offered us a cheaper price. We walked back to her store and finally settled on a price after much laughing and repeating of our preferred price. I now have two new pairs of pants that are “hen ku”.