(101 Things About Shanghai) The Mrs Mu Home Shopping Network

For someone who has an incorrigible habit of packing up and moving every year or so (and sometimes even more often), I also have some terrible lingering pack-rat habits that have followed me from my much younger, more geographically stable days (like, pre-1993).

I buy stuff.

I buy really stupid, pointless stuff that I never use. Or use a few times (with great enthusiasm) then forget about.

I buy stuff that I end up leaving behind in flats in London, in Galway, in Cape Town, in Istanbul and Shanghai.  There are probably still South Park figurines stashed somewhere in a cold-water shack in rural Ghana and watercolour paint brushes in a closet in Shepherd’s Bush in West London. I know for a fact that I left twice my body weight in stuff behind in Turkey when I left two years ago.

I’m busy here in Shanghai accumulating more potential detritus that I know for certain won’t fit in the overhead luggage compartment: stuffed elephant and hippo from Ikea, a stuffed panda from Chengdu (all proceeds went to panda charities!), a yoga mat I haven’t unfurled in about 6 months, hand weights I haven’t lifted since august (I lift chalk! A lot- and when you write above shoulder height for five minutes on the blackboard it hurts! It’s a workout!), a ton of bootlegged books-by-the-gram, art supplies I picked up on Fuzhou Lu  over a year ago in a fit of creative inspiration that petered out embarrassingly quickly, a half dozen very large and awesome marionnettes from Myanmar, several very heavy (but pretty) not-really-antique metal statues from the not-really-antiques market on Dongtai lu, a slow cooker, a rice cooker, a marvellously heavy wok (well seasoned and pretty much the only thing we really use in the kitchen these days, aside from occasional slow cooker stews), a dozen pairs of shoes that almost fit me but not really, and, um, yeah, other stuff.

I haven’t exactly sold all my belongings to start my life of minimalist freedom on the road.

In fact, I’m making it worse. Or rather, Mrs Mu in my office at work is making it worse: she only comes in once a week (she’s a part time lecturer at my university) but her influence is far greater than the time I’ve spent with her ought to be.

I buy stuff from her. Or rather, I buy stuff through her. She has an incorrigible TaoBao addiction, with TaoBao being the Chinese version of eBay.  Every Friday, she comes into the office, grinning from ear to ear, showing me her latest toys. She buys awesome toys. Let me show you what she brought in last week, which I then begged her to get me.

The Health Hammer ™ as modeled by Kevin The Panda (pardon the blurry photo):

 

Kevin and his Authentic TCM Health Hammer

 

This is a handy dandy 3-function qi aligner, with a bonus back scratcher attachment that doubles as a hand-qi-rake.

The pointy hairbrush bit on one side of the mallet end is for strategic pounding of your arms and legs and feet, like the old men and women do with just their fists as they take their exercise down our street at 6am, smacking themselves as they walk.

There is a knobbly hard plastic dome on the other side of the hairbrushy bit that is for the second stage of pounding your extremities. It feels pretty good after a long day of writing at above shoulder level on a chalkboard.

 

Health Hammer, only 20rmb!

 

I bought two.

 

For a limited time only!

 

She’s also notorious for regular visits to the tea and medicinal herbs (and bark and twig and dried animal) market near the university. I have already written a post about my attempt to go there to buy something magical that would give me energy, vitality and perhaps a hint of immortality.  A lot of those bags of bark and twig are still in the kitchen drawer because they taste so vile when brewed that I approach them only every few months.

 

My Tea and Herb Market Stash

 

However, I don’t need to actually go there myself to buy things using my handwritten herbal glossary and Lonely Planet useless phrasebook and my embarrassingly mispronounced skills in mandarin. She goes there weekly and asks me ever so casually yet enticingly if I’d like her to pick anything up for me. I would! Of course I would!

So now I have these (and more) in my desk drawer at work:

This makes skin pretty!

 

This makes you magically slim!

 

This ones gives you dewey skin AND boosts the immune system!

 

And I actually do drink these.  For now.

 

Comments

6 responses to “(101 Things About Shanghai) The Mrs Mu Home Shopping Network”

  1. Sally Avatar

    How could you not buy all that wonderful stuff? I’m pretty much ready to move to China and start shopping with Mrs Mu myself. I need a qi aligner! I need a herbs to make me pretty! I need a giant stuffed panda! I used to be addicted to the junk at the 100 yen shop in Japan. Mrs. Mu might be my new 100 yen shop. Screw minimalism.

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      I know! Just because I live in the wonderful realm of Abroad doesn’t mean I have to give up my mindlessly consumerist lifestyle! I like accumulating stuff- hell, having lived Abroad since I was 19, I’ve never been able to buy a car or flat screen TV or desktop PC or any other Important Purchases. I’ve missed out! I think the qi-aligner will help me get over my lack of adult milestones.

      Minimalism is for people who haven’t the imagination to Think Big!

  2. richardc Avatar
    richardc

    Panda burger! I have one of those. Everything in china is magical, I wonder when they will get a FCC/FTC?

  3. Marie Avatar

    I like my stuff too. I’ve been abroad (and done without) for long enough that I think I get to keep my keepsakes. I don’t have a house so these things are my house. Someday I’ll have a house and it will have all these cool things in it and then those naysayers of stuff-ness will be sorry. All these random things will suddenly come together into something beautiful. Oh yes, they will be jealous. Jealous of my stuff!

    1. MaryAnne Avatar
      MaryAnne

      I had denied myself access to Stuff for many years, living out of 20kg luggage-allowance backpacks, until a few years into my time in Turkey. I realized I was nearly 30 years old and had nothing to hold onto. Now, 8 years later, I now have a lot of really cool stuff– even after the massive leaving-Turkey purge. If only I had somewhere to put it all (besides my parents’ basement).

  4. Fiona at Life on Nanchang Lu Avatar

    For my first year here in Shanghai I pretended I didn’t actually have another house in another country full to the brim of all my stuff, you know, like a collection of vintage sixties evening shoes and old biscuit tins. I just went on a massive buying binge. Now my husband keeps asking insensitive questions like ‘where are you going to put it all?’ But there is a whole new collecting universe out there in Shanghai. Embrace the stuff. Especially the panda stuff.

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