How many technicians does it take to fix an escalator?

I woke up early enough for once to catch Kel leaving for work in the morning, though about all I did was groggily say hi (and pass on the news about the flooding toilet last night), visit the washroom when time permitted, and then crashed again on the couch outside for a couple more hours. Mmmmm sleep. And when I got up, the blog got a little bit of love before I did anything else.

All this meant that it was close to 3 pm this time before I went out anywhere, and Kel was going to be done work at 4:30 pm. She did say in the morning though that she was going to clean the bathroom in the evening to prep it for drain cleaner fluid, so it would be later before she could join me for dinner, and we'd have to get back earlier than the previous days so that we could shower for the evening earlier, so the drain cleaner fluid could go into the drain earlier. This is because it had to sit in the drain for 8 hours before she could pour hot water down the drain, and also so that she could shower in the morning before work at 7-ish am.

With that time window, I decided to not venture too far afield again, and after some consideration, I decided to first start out around a mall that I had visited on my prior trip here, the Aeon Mall at Panyu Square.

Even though I never explored it the last time either, as I was here just to look for an item, it also turned out that I wasn't really into exploring this mall either. I never went upstairs the last time, and I didn't this time either. Instead, I hung out on the ground floor and ended up being enticed by a piece of Classic Juicy Pork Chop Bun being sold by BreadTalk, a store that I had seen in Singapore.

But look at that piece of bread, doesn't it look fantastic? And I can tell you that it tasted fantastic too. If bread was always like this I'd love eating bread and not have decades of bread trauma that I had to throw off with a new year's resolution a couple of years ago.

While munching on the bread, I wandered onto this scene:

There was a... instead of where I'd normally see gacha boxes or claw machines, there were plastic cages set up selling kittens. Most were asleep but the one in the middle top was exploring his cage and staring pitifully at me and another girl who was passing by. Terrible.

After the bread, I went to where the Aeon supermarket was and went in there, as I was hoping to locate a specific bottle of milk that Kel and I had been talking about in there. No dice though. The supermarket itself looked decent but was very similar to the other Aeon one I had just visited three days ago:

Nothing wrong with that though, I enjoy all supermarkets, and there were still interesting things to see, like this Qing Dumpling stand:

The milk section was something else. I had seen something similar at the other Aeon, but I had no need to dive into the milk section there at that point. This one had at least six, maybe eight, staff members (the ones in powder blue shirts) standing around trying to get people to try their specific milk product and buy that specific milk product, even over other milk products that you were trying to browse through and buy. This, along with China's hawking and soliciting culture in general, was and continues to be VERY annoying. So annoying that I left the store and then left the entire mall area right after that, haha.

Seriously, I did. I walked all the way out of the mall, passing the region where I recognized crossing the road and buying my China power plug converter on my last trip here. I actually still have that with me on this trip, in my luggage, I just haven't needed to use it.

I then decided to take a Didi to another place that I had been eyeing. This was a Walmart located in a mall about 40 minutes away in car from where I am, but only actually 10-15 minutes away from where Kel was living. And while the ride here was the worst economy Didi ride that I ever had, with a weird wet smell in the car that I had to endure, this one was probably the best non-premium ride that I had. It basically felt like a premium ride as it was so smooth, and the driver also provided me with a charging cord for USB-C devices. Which was useful since I had realized that I had forgotten to bring my power bank along to charge up my Samsung Ultra S23. Well, now I had a free charging port for my phone and a long ride to push the battery back up to full! I was contented as an uncaged kitten with this development.

40 minutes later or so, we reached the mall in question, and I dismounted my steed and entered this thing.

The mall was listed as Xiongfeng City, though I didn't really realize what that meant yet. That's just a fancy name for a mall, right? I went in, and ascended the escalator to the second floor Walmart there.

There were a lot of household items on the top level, and then escalators going down to the bottom level where most of the groceries, snacks, and other food- and drink-related products were.

Both levels were huge (though not as huge as a nearby Sam's Club, Kel later said) and had lots of space between shelves and counters, and I was struck by how few people there were there in general versus a normal supermarket. Also, 90% of the items on the bottom level were from their inhouse Marketside brand, and maybe people didn't care for it or something. I'm not sure. Regardless, like an old art teacher of mine said, there's too much blank white space between things!

As minor sidenotes, there was another thing lost in translation here as digital products does not mean what they think it means:

And someone stood up this fish on the ice rack and that creeped me out a little.

After walking through the Walmart, I left through the bottom level and went into the mall proper. It was a two level mall with a central atrium and a loop on either side of the atrium on both levels that fed back into the center.

There was still a Christmas tree on the bottom level of the atrium, but since there were Chinese New Year style present boxes below it, that makes it fine as seasonal decoration anyway right? Right??

And finally, there were two exits at the back, on the ground floor and the upper floor, that led out onto this:

Oooh, now I saw why it was called Xiongfeng City. That mall that I was in was one of multiple buildings in the area, and the entire development included three tall residential blocks as well as a number of shorter ones along the sides, plus a hotel, along with multiple recreational and food facilities. It was similar to Clifford Wonderland, where Kel stayed, in scope. Each building was labelled with a letter and a number as well:

And later on I found wall maps like this that showed the layout of the place.

Looking back behind me, the Walmart that I had entered was in building B1.

B1 was the only real mall building with any sustained retail presence inside of it. B2, B3, and B4 had one or two shops in them each at most, plus a few shops on the outside of the mall and with only doors that pointed outwards, and while I didn't fully explore A1, the entrance I did go in by there led me down a long, singular passage with nothing else on either side until it ended at the front door of a department store or something called Himaxx that required a membership to enter. I think it was perhaps free, but I wasn't about to divulge my personal information so I turned around and walked back out that oddly long passage to one single shop.

But for the moment, I was still exploring the area around B1. I went out north and west, and met this mewling cat along a road.

A bit further west, and there was a little children's playground thing and then an outdoor stage area behind it. Although the stage area wasn't in use by any event, the speakers there blared out music, much of it English as far as I heard, in the evenings and through the night.

There was a second level series of walkways connecting the B1-B4 buildings that one could get on up onto via various staircases.

But those walkways were kinda pointless, although the second storey elevation did allow for some better photos.

Then there was the "night market" in the city, 98夜市. The main area of this night market was covered by a concrete and glass ceiling, but the walls were left open so that the entire area was technically open to the elements. There were plants up near the ceiling that occasionally dropped leaves down at the people below, as though to simulate sitting in the outdoors beneath a tree without actually going so. It kind of worked though as the vibe was very nice and peaceful. It was a lovely day and a gentle wind swept through the area, but I wonder what the place looked like if it was snowing, for example. All the market stalls were indoors too, but only about maybe 50% of the stalls were open. The rest were either just not open that day, or completely shuttered.

There was an outdoor seating area that no one used while I was there, too. But it was tempting.

While the tables weren't necessarily the cleanest, I was actually really impressed by how clean the entire place was in general, and the complete lack of houseflies and other bugs in the area. And the lack of garbage sitting around for the most part. Granted, there weren't a ton of people around either, though maybe that was a function of it being that time slice between lunch and dinner. Instead of a night market though, it was more a Singapore-style hawker centre, without the ubiquitous houseflies and mynahs.

Besides the mall buildings and the night market, and several higher end restaurants around B2, there were also a lot of ground floor convenience stores and eateries pointing out towards the streets, scattered especially around the S1-S6 buildings on the east side. There were some on the west side too but I didn't really explore those much as many were closed (if they were ever open) by the time I swung around there, and the ones I saw there look more like furniture stores and bank branches and things like that. The east ones, nestled around the night market region, looked like this:

I also liked the plaza at the bottom of the two tall residential buildings in the northeast.

It made me feel very small.

Next up are some pictures snatched from inside the B1-B5 buildings, like these essays and drawings (why did they make their students all draw bugs??) posted outside a tuition centre or something similar:

An escalator that seemed to lead to a dead end (the glass panels at the top actually slid open to reveal a billiards parlour, but it really did look like an escalator that went nowhere):

And some sort of wealth display outside a restaurant and the only hotel in the region:

There was a seafood shop where you got to choose your food from a tank. There was a Guangzhou Ocean World somewhere in this mall complex but I don't think this was it:

And a sundries shop where a cute black dog with way too fluffy feet ran to the door threshold and stopped there to stare at me as I walked by.

And this pretty chain of lights in B2 leading to discount clothes store at the end.

I mentioned earlier how I didn't really explore the west side, but the pictures I do have of the area are from around 7 pm:

Shiny cars everywhere, and shuttered appliance stores and such instead of eateries. The view of the east side from the west, across the outdoor concert venue which divided the middle of the artificial city, sure was nice too.

There were apparently two little free ride things that circled the area, their route was also actually marked on the map above. The map calls them shuttles, but in my mind they were probably just these things:

They probably did have actual shuttles though, I just didn't see or recognize them. The whole place definitely gave me vibes of both Clifford Wonderland here in Guangzhou, as well as Riyue Plaza in Haikou from nearly two weeks ago now, though. Big sprawling mall parks that required free passenger shuttles, and they all also had these little amusement train rides.

I passed the more upscale restaurant area that I mentioned earlier, basically the area around the B2 building, on my trek back east as well, and they were nicely lit up at night:

Too bright for this KAWS Companion guy who we've seen several time this trip now though:

I had been in touch with Kel while I was walking around, and she had finally said that she was done and ready for dinner. I suggested that she come down here as it was only around 10-15 minutes away by Didi and she was not sure if she had ever been here before. and I went over to wait for her at the same Walmart drop-off point before walking her over towards the night market. She said after arriving that she had been here once, but only to the Decathlon on the other side of the complex from the Walmart, and that there had been a carnival tent in the middle where the empty stadium venue stood now, and possibly more stalls lining up the outside portion of the night market as well, though she was not certain of that part and had not actually gone inside of it.

After walking around a bit, we both went to the night market to eat, settling ourselves down in front of a giant screen showing Tom and Jerry episodes as we tried out stuff from several stalls. Our favourites were packets of bee hoon, or rice noodles, from this store:

He cooked it in front of us and sold each box for 13 yuan, or $2.58 CAD. They were so nice that I jokingly told Kel that I wanted to buy and takeaway 4 more for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. I didn't in the end, but Kel went back to get her own bowl after tasting mine.

My other item was from this store:

The woman had been calling out to me as I had wandered through the complex and passed through the night market, asking me to buy from her each time, and I guess that eventually worked as the food did look good. Especially that teppanyaki dish second from the right on the second row above, Grilled Enoki Mushroom with Beef. However, it turned out that she didn't actually have any mushrooms to grill, so she instead said that she'd substitute it with chilli. I was dubious but agreed, and this is what I got 15 minutes later, costing 39 yuan ($7.73 CAD):

It was actually pretty great. The caramelized onion was especially nice, but everything went well together, even the substitute green chilli.

Kel also bought some skewers for us to share:

They were okay! I'm not sure how much they cost. The way that they work is that the seller has a stall full of uncooked skewers, and you pick out the ones you want and pay for them. They ask you how much chilli you want on them, and then they grill it on the spot and serve it to you in ten minutes or so. I've seen many of these stalls but not actually tried them until now. Interesting.

The ambience in this night market was top tier though. There still weren't many people around at all, and we watched cartoons and falling leaves and the people walking by from here. It kind of felt like a hidden gem, even though that made no sense, there were plenty of signage through the complex pointing people here. Kel said that maybe it was a weekday night sort of thing.

And best of all, though this is a bit cynical of me saying so -- I don't think any of these stalls were allowed to be on Meituan, so there weren't any helmeted pests honking their horns and driving their bikes into here to get food for some random client somewhere while people who were actually there to eat had to wait longer.

There were several other stores that I would have been happy to try, but we were full after all that and were going to take a Didi back immediately, except Kel expressed interest at checking out the Walmart since we were here. She wanted to, and eventually did, buy a carpet for the floor beside her bed, and I'm very glad we walked through here as I got to see a scene that I had no idea was a thing at all.

So Japanese supermarkets have a thing where as their fresh food gets stale, and as they approach the end of the night, they'll start sticking escalating discount stickers on the food to try to entice people to buy them. And that's how you can get a lot of ready-to-eat food for very cheap if you're patient about things. Apparently, China has a similar thing, except more chaotic, they smack stickers onto all the remaining deli products and shove them out onto carts, playing a loudspeaker loop saying "好消息, 好消息!" (good news, good news!) and drawing a crowd of shoppers to pick through them.

The bakery section had one too but there were much less people there:

We didn't buy anything, but it was really interesting to see. This was all at around 9:30 pm or so, and Baidu says that particular branch closes at 10:30 pm, so they do that an hour before closing.

We went home right after this though, and took a nice shower before Kel doused the place in cleaner fluid. We then took some time to purchase a couple of things off of Taobao with the hopes that it would arrive here on Friday, so that I could take them with me and bring them home for Mom and Dad. I also took the chance to order a couple of things myself, particularly a horse plushie as well as a couple of item packages from a Chinese fan anime that were practically impossible to get anywhere else since it's not a popular show or not. We've been unable to transfer money through WeChat due to my overseas card restrictions so I gave her a physical 100 yuan note instead. That's 20 whole Canadian dollars for my stuff!

Whether everything will arrive before or by Friday will be interesting to see, although all of the items allegedly are scheduled to come in before then. It's kind of the wild west out here though since it's the equivalent of hoping that six different Amazon marketplace sellers send their items out in time and that none of the actual delivery people mess up.

We'll see!