Enjoying the Markets

Lately, my new projects with 3 Dumplings have taken me all around the city of Shanghai. To new places that I yet to see in my 2 months time here. In the past couple days, I've made my way to the Muslim Food Market in Jing'An, the Nanjing Clothing and Accessories Market near People's Square, the Xinyang Fashion and Gift Market near the Science/Technology Museum, and the Xu Hui Wet Produce Market. These four places have been a lot of fun.

I'm trying to get a good feel for what we will need to show our customers when we take them around the city to various markets for shopping excursions. There are definitely some very wild foods available at the wet markets around here that I bet westerners will ask questions about. Live eels, snakes, all kinds of fish, frogs, turtles, and more.

The clothing and gifts markets are a lot of fun. They've got a ton of fake stuff: dvds, purses, jerseys, shoes, clothing, artwork, computer software, electronics...pretty much anything you could ask for. It's a great spot for tourists, and you bargain your way through every purchase, so I think people will really enjoy visiting it.

Creating a full training booklet for tour guides will not be an easy task. There's a lot to think about, ya know. I have to put myself in the tourist's shoes and try to figure out everything that they'd want to know about, and I don't know much about the city myself, so it's a lot to take in, but it's a good project.

I recently met with a marketing director at the Pudong Shangrila, a very upscale hotel in the downtown area (probably the nicest hotel I've ever been in, they treated me like a king, it was great), and she provided me with a lot of good information regarding hotels and how we can go about presenting our tours to hotel clients. I'm thinking that we're going to want to hook up with the following organizations to distribute our tour offerings: both large and boutique hotels, hostels, national consulates, relocation companies, international schools, multinational organizations, expat websites, Shanghai city info sites, and maybe some other more well established tour companies. I think that an audience we should really consider targeting is new families coming to Shanghai because either the husband or wife is being relocated to the city for work on a longterm basis. Our cooking classes and market excursions could be a great way for them to learn about the city for the first time, our tours would be an excellent introduction to Shanghai life.

I've got to focus on this tour guide booklet here this upcoming week. There's lots to do!

---------------------

In soccer this morning, we beat the German team 5 - 1, and the weather was incredible. We couldn't have asked for a better day to play. AJ and I are heading to start our 'season' with the other team that I joined tomorrow for a 5pm game. Should be fun!

--

PMM