What can I exchange?
I can’t help but think of using myself, my foreignness as a thing to offer to people in Chongqing. I have been told that I will probably get stared at but I wonder if this will actually happen? I say this, as I don’t think I look obviously western. However if this is the case and I do get a lot of attention how can I use it and engage people beyond the surface of how I look? This has sparked off a number of ideas from having words written on my face to simply standing in a public space with viewing borders around me.
Recently I have been working in Selfridges, Manchester store over Christmas for a bit of extra money and found observing and participating in the retail experience fascinating. I embraced customer interaction trying to get people into conversation and seamlessly link in a sale. The social performance of shopping got me thinking about how I can sell myself like a product and who do I want to sell to when I am in China? I noticed many Chinese people purchasing at Gucci and Louis Vuitton concessions. We opened our doors at 8am and by 10.30am Gucci had totally sold out of all their sale items.
I worked in the Paperchase concession and we had a mixture of branded shopping bags and Selfridges famous yellow bags. Most people didn’t want the Paperchase bag favouring the yellow ones after all if you have spent money in Selfridges you want everyone to know about it. This got me thinking about the value of these paper bags especially if you take them to another country like China. How much money would someone bid for a paper Selfridges, Gucci or Louis Vuitton shopping bag?
