After going to see the aquarium in 大连 (dà lián), I had wanted to get 申琦 (shēn qí) a stuffed polar bear or dolphin to remind her of that trip. I tried to find one at several department stores including 新百广场 (xīn bǎi guǎngchǎng) and 东购 (dōng gòu) but couldn’t find anything that was even remotely close. My friend Leo then told me about a place called the 玩具批发市场 (wánjù pīfā shìchǎng) which basically means wholesale toy market.

I hoped in a cab not knowing what to expect. The cab driver didn’t know exactly which building it was in, so he dropped me off in the general area and I asked around till I found the place.

The building was basically laid out like a giant shopping mall, but had tons of individual vendors in stalls on 5 different floors all selling nothing but children’s toys. Jackpot! It was exactly the place that I needed to find, and reminded me of how different China is from America. There are almost no places in America that are setup this way, but in China, these types of places are quite normal. Someone wants to sell toys so they buy a stall on the appropriate floor, next to hundreds of other stalls, all of which sell roughly the same type of thing. And this is just normal. Forget starting a singular toy store, or a toy store among other types of stores in a larger mall type structure. Nope. Not here.

I made my way up to the third floor where they had stuffed animals.  While I couldn’t find a polar bear, I managed to get her a nice big stuffed dolphin (海豚) (hǎi tún) for only 12RMB ($1.50 US). The same thing would have been at least $20 back in the states.

Mission Accomplished