fatman? - an update in a roundabout sort of way

Following my last subjectively successful visit to the cloth market at Dongmen Lu, I decided to get more things made. Abigail and the children came with me to supervise and Abigail is having some stuff made herself.

Armed with pictures torn out of Heat magazine (optimistically I was toting a picture of a tasty two-piece that Matt Damon wore at the premiere of one of his tedious films) and the equivalent of Women's Wear Daily, London W8 Edition (the Boden catalogue) we hit Ken's Tailor. Bit by bit, we added to the very long list of things for Ken and his hopefully happy army of backstreet tailors to make. We chose Ken partly because of the quality of his workmanhip and partly because he spoke pretty good English and we didn't have Tony or Isabella to help us with translation duties. You should try finding the putonghua equivalent of "Double cuffs please my good man, and make those collars good and pointy" in Lonely Planet before you mock...

We drove a hard bargain and kept threatening to take our enormous order elsewhere. Ken protested that the quality of his work was far superior to anything else available and he couldn't possibly make up our order for that price. This was a big fib on both counts.

Blessed with a meticulous eye for pointless detail and frippery (and a sensitive disposition if you believe school reports about me weeping at the death of the class hamster) I had already checked out Ken's samples on his mannequins. Everything from the buttons on the shirts to the waistband linings in the suit trousers was identical to the suit and shirts I had previously had made 7 or 8 stalls down the road. The ultimate test was to ask him to make some alterations to Number 1 China suit (fatman has lost nearly 8kg since the start of this adventure) and sure enough he asked me if he himself had "made" it! Had Mr. Liu, of Number 32, Shanghai Shiliu Pu, staged an audacious corporate buyout of Ken's tailors at Number 17? Or is it simply the case that everything at the cloth market is knocked up at the same factory on the outskirts of Shanghai?

I don't know and I'm not likely to be able to find out. The second fib was that he couldn't do it for the same price. Of course he relented in the end and for a princely RMB 1900 (£126) Ken and his probably-not-so-merry-men will make me a suit with 2 pairs of trousers, 3 shirts, a winter jacket and some wool trousers for Abigail and copy a couple of tops for my colleague Patricia.

Next Sunday, we will pick up Ken's handiwork, all being well. I'll keep you posted and for Ken's sake I will try not to lose any more weight in the meantime.