SHENZHEN: Shop til you drop into dim sum

The Luohu Commercial City shopping mall (羅湖商業成) is a genius marketing location, just inside the border between China and Hong Kong, with a train station and immigration crossing literally yards away from its doors.

Luohu is not quaint or even enchanting. It’s a crass bastion of copyright infringement, but if you have no problems with replica designer purses, shoes, watches, sunglasses, electronics and DVDs, then this is your stop.

The six-floor complex is a dizzying maze of tiny stalls, hawkers and pickpockets. There’s a book dedicated to helping you get around, or use the numbered signs above each stall as a guide. But it’s not a big deal if you get lost; many of them are owned by the same people and carry similar products.

Because Shenzhen is in Guangdong province and borders Hong Kong, the majority of sellers here speak Cantonese as well as the official operating language of Mandarin.

Will you be scammed if you only speak English? Maybe. Will you get around faster and successfully bargain for lower prices if you speak Chinese, or are accompanied by someone who does? Yup.

My parents come here primarily to see Tailor Liu for tailored suits, formal dresses, and coats.

To find him: head to the top floor and The Laurel restaurant (丹桂轩). Register for a table for dim sum (more on that later) — you’ll get a slip with a number on it — then walk down the hallway to the bathrooms and turn left onto the selling floor. Take your first left again and look for booth 50B on your left-hand side.

There are dozens of tailors here, but you’ll notice few of them have a lineup like there often is at Tailor Liu’s because he’s consistently good at what he does.

His brother is also a tailor, but they don’t talk to each other. It’s weird.

(If you look at the photo of Tailor Liu measuring my dad, you’ll see that his business ends with the pink stool, and his brother’s starts with the silver shelf. Do not step into his side if you’re not there to see him.)

The process

You can bring your designs or ripped-out magazine pages to Tailor Liu, or you can flip through his catalogues and patterns to point out what you want.

The tailors are surrounded by booths selling all sorts of materials. So you can buy what you need there, or provide your own that you’ve bought from home. His wife Susana can help guide you through what you need.

It’s best to schedule a second fitting to ensure your tailor-made clothes are perfect. We came back four days later to try on what was made so far for more adjustments, and then picked them up four days after that. That’s what worked best for our schedule but they’re pretty flexible and can even deliver the final product to Hong Kong.

Jason’s wool/cashmere suit with an extra pair of pants came out to about $150 CAD (that’s total for workmanship and material), while my two stunning cocktail dresses and one cheongsam averaged $70 CAD each.

Time to eat

Now remember that card you picked up to get in line for a table at The Laurel? Squeeze yourself through the crowd around the hostess reading numbers with a microphone and see where you’re at.

You’ve likely saved yourself standing in line for hours, especially on weekends. (When we returned 2 1/2 hours later, it was still another 45 minutes until our number came up even though the dining room is huge.)

There are other restaurants in Luohu but Laurel does superb dim sum and is fast and clean.

Marinated shiitake mushrooms and peanuts with tiny, salty fried fish (can anyone identify these?) are brought with the tea as snacks.

This location of Laurel (there are 10, mostly in Shenzhen) offers several specialty items like fish head soup and hot pot, but we stuck with dim sum from the menu.

We got the standard shrimp dumplings, spareribs, chicken feet, but we were famished so everything tasted especially good.

Notable were the assorted rice noodle rolls (豬腸粉), which came stuffed with BBQ pork, shrimp or preserved egg, and the ja leung (炸两). It’s one of Jason’s favourites and was perfect here, with the soft steamed rice noodles wrapped around a fresh crunchy Chinese doughnut (油炸鬼).

Trust me, you’ll need a nice sit-down meal after navigating Luohu and all of its offerings.

Laurel Restaurant (丹桂轩), 5th floor, Luo Hu Commercial City, Railway Station Square, 86-756-8232-3668. Open 7 a.m.-11:30 p.m.

Tailor Jim Liu, 50B, Duocai Cloth City, 5th floor, Luo Hu Commercial City, Railway Station Square, mobile 86-135-0967-1542. Open 10:30 a.m.-8 p.m.