Tag: shopping

Africa abroad: scramble for Guangzhou

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Maybe I’m too early. There are flatscreen TVs, fashionably ripped jeans and perfume brands I’ve never heard of – but not much selling going on. Security guards lean over the stairwell. Traders count their stock. The four-storey Tianxiu building, in central Guangzhou in southern China, comes alive later perhaps.

I won’t know for sure, though, not today. It’s three in the afternoon, and I have just a few hours in the city. I’ve made a beeline for Tianxiu: Guangzhou is home to the largest African community in the country, and this is the heart of it all.

Fabrics on sale

Continue reading “Africa abroad: scramble for Guangzhou” →

The wrong place for headspace

patushkaLeave a comment
Sound of silence
The sound of silence

Some smart folks at Selfridges lured me in with their reverse psychology the other day. Cashing in on the post-Christmas tightening of purse-strings, they’re offering a limited-edition range of debranded products; “headspace pods” provide a few minutes of escape; and a space usually reserved for exhibitions or pop-up shops (the pop-up shop: another concept I’m struggling with since returning to the western world), has been turned into a Silence Room.

What’s marketed as an “insulated inner-sanctum” is not actually that quiet: you can hear the noise of the café next door (and this was a Tuesday evening; what would a Saturday be like? But it felt good, sitting doing nothing in the semi-darkness, shoeless and phoneless as per requirements, with just a few teenage girls whispering in one corner and a couple asleep in one another’s arms in the other. The couple left before me, but were still dawdling in the foyer when I left. “I’m nervous to go back out there!”, laughed the girl. Continue reading “The wrong place for headspace” →