We don't get told too often by random people on the street "thank you for coming to China," but a few weeks ago we were. :-)
A while back, Rachel knit me some slippers to wear in the winter time, but the problem was I kept wearing through the denim soles she put on. So she wanted to find something else to sew onto the bottom to make them last longer. Luckily, there are cute old ladies all over the city who sell shoe inserts which are essentially just a very thick tough few layers of fabric sown together in the shape of a foot. So she thought she could just find the right size, sew it to the bottom of the slipper and problem solved!
Problem: my feet at much larger than the average Chinese guy. So we had to ask one of the ladies who makes them to make us a special pair in my size. What size is that? Size 49 (14 US).
"Wow!" she exclaimed, "the biggest size I have ever sold before in my life is a 47!"
A few days later we returned to find our custom inserts all ready to go.
"Thank you for coming to China," she said, "otherwise, I would never have had the opportunity to make this large of a shoe insert!" We were glad we could make her day.
And apparently make the day of a few others standing around watching us try to negotiate all this in Chinese. This was another guy that sold similar items who really wanted to get a picture with me. :-)
