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Blount: Full-contact shopping

By RACHEL BLOUNT, Star Tribune

Last update: August 20, 2008

With the Olympic event schedule winding down, former colleague Jay Weiner and I took an opportunity to travel outside the Olympic zone to engage in the only sport for which I have any aptitude: shopping.

We went to the Pearl Market, a haggler's paradise. The first floor has electronics, watches and general stuff. Second floor is luxury-brand knockoff central: mostly handbags and shoes. Third floor is inexpensive jewelry and Chinese handcrafts and souvenirs. Fourth floor has the good gems.

We took a quick spin through the third floor, or as quick as it got, anyway. The proprietor of every booth tries to lure you in. "Hey, lady? What do you want to buy? Come in! Look!'' And if you want to buy, you must be well-versed in the Chinese art of the deal.

Read more...

Reporters Rachel Blount and Jim Souhan will be sending their postcards home throughout the Summer Games. For more coverage, check out our special Olympics section.

Souhan: Translation, please

One intriguing and occasionally hilarious aspect of covering the Olympics in a foreign country is the presence of interpreters, many of whom, especially in China, seem under orders to avoid controversial questions and answers.

Souhan: In the great outdoors

We're heading down the backstretch of the Olympics, and it's turned out to be a different experience than I expected.

More from this series:

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  • Blount: A shout out to Van Meter, Iowa
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  • Blount: Technology, who knew!?
    As China takes a leap into its future, I am taking a baby step into the 21st century. I now own a digital camera, and I'm not afraid to use it.
  • Souhan: Mixed zones and chop sticks
    By Jim Souhan
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    The language barrier can be daunting in China, but there's usually a way around it. The helpful people here want to understand us. We want to communicate with them. So both parties keep working until they find a solution, something that happened twice in the past days for me.
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  • Blount: Water, water everywhere
    Turns out there is something the Chinese do not seem to have perfected. Drainage.
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  • Souhan: Sun and soot don't mix
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  • Blount: A one-way trip to Tiananmen Square
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    By JIM SOUHAN
  • Blount: TV promos not as easy as they look
    The days before the Olympics are crammed with press conferences, with athletes being trotted through the Main Press Center in a constant parade to preview their competitions. Thursday's menu included some funny moments and some poignant ones.
  • On baseball, the smog and, um, civil rights
    Davey Johnson will manage, and, as happens sometimes, he was a lot more entertaining after I wrote about him for the Star Tribune than he was when I was working on a story about him.
  • Chinese are clearly eager to impress
    With 1.3 billion people, human resources would not seem to be a problem in China. So it wasn't unexpected when a posse showed up to greet us at the airport Tuesday, when our flight from Newark landed in Beijing.