Handbag Heaven, Guangzhou

One of the little stories I mentioned in an earlier post is this one, although I probably shouldn't be telling you it in here:

In one of my earlier jaunts up to Guangzhou, Halley took me to this off-the-beaten-track serious shopping mall: don't know the real name but I immediately christened it Handbag Heaven and that's even before I discovered the secret at the heart.

The first visit, well, I was so impressed. Many storeys tall, it was all labyrinthine with winding aisles and all these little shops all selling the widest and most beautiful range of every type of accessory - shoes, sunglasses, handbags and purses - imaginable. We had only an hour for lunch so couldn't see much, but what I did see I totally enjoyed, and I especially loved the unexpected sight of all these "traditionally built", traditionally clothed African women shopping in there, all swapping their plain rubber flip flops for very fancy leather flipflops. Like, serious upgrading of image stuff!

And what I totally loved was ... well, during our last visit to New Zealand, Baby Jane's kids fell in love with these gorgeous jewelled purses and were pleading with me to buy them each one, but ... pshaw! ... they were NZ$130.00 each so ... hey, I can do mean!

Yet here I was, in Guangzhou's Handbag Heaven when I came across a shop selling them ... at 30 yuan a piece. That's less than A$5.00 ... so I instantly fauxed-up my "Best Auntie on Earth" and selected three. And yes indeed, they were thrilled to bits but instantly put them into their "too good to use" drawer, which wasn't the idea at all.

Although I must say I do understand the "too good to use" drawer. Here's something I have in mine:

My ostrich-skin Hermes Birkin to-die-for!

And please never ever tell Keith this, but double-click to check it out:

It's HK dollars, OK!
HONG KONG dollars!

You have to divide by six. And I didn't pay that much anyway. As you can see from the calculator I'm haggling like crazy.

Anyway, this trip, Halley said she'd gone back to Handbag Heaven when she'd had more time and she'd explored for a whole day and made a mighty discovery that she had to share with me ... so we dashed over there instead of doing lunch.

Anyway, I started to film the adventure, but almost instantly I was told to switch off and we were followed by security so I wasn't game to film anymore ... except for a single shot when we finally got where we were going because the irony was so overwhelming:




I cannot tell you where this miracle discovery is situated because, like you can see, the place is a labyrinth, but I do know that we walked up stairs and down stairs and through narrow, dark doorways, and along many dim corridors ... and we did ask people some of whom pointed and some of whom said they didn't know what we were talking about ... but eventually we passed through a narrow doorway and came across an entire section that consisted of a series of shops ... all selling Triple AAA Superplus of every brand imaginable, of every style imaginable, of every single thing your heart has ever yearned for.

And in there we saw many Italian businessmen dealing, negotiating, arguing with various shop-keepers, wanting to place large orders for Italian luxury goods, and the sellers all saying they already had deals with various Florentine businesses and couldn't break their exclusivity clauses ... which lets us know something very interesting.

It also lets us know that, well, you know how people are always saying that the reason those fake luxury goods you see in Florentine markets always look so real is that ... whisper, whisper ... back of a truck! From what I witnessed is this is a very nice rumour that doesn't have a winsy bit of truth behind it. What it does have behind it is knowledge of the labyrinthine Handbag Heaven of Guangzhou.