Today, Samantha and I really wanted to go to the zoo to see the panda bear; we've been in China for 3 weeks and haven't seen a panda yet. We were running a little late on time due to sleeping in and we wanted a Chinese student to come with us. Our first Chinese friend had to cancel our zoo trip last minute but we decided to ask Martin since we never get to spend time with him, he agreed to come with and helped us grab a taxi and everything. We arrived at the zoo around 4:23 p.m. and learned that the zoo closes at 4:30 p.m. We were in huge shock to find out how early the zoo closes, especially on a Saturday. And that is when I realized how every store in China closes semi early. In the United States, the normal time for a store to close is around 9 p.m. excluding Sundays. Whereas here in China, businesses can basically close whenever they want. The other day I wanted to go to China Mobile and it was around 7 p.m. I went up to the front desk of the hotel to ask them if they knew, and they said it was already closed. It made me interested to see what regulations, if any, the government has regarding business hours. Overall, the day was a complete fail; we wanted to go to the zoo to see a panda but couldn't. Instead, we spent most of our day battling with the unknown business hours of shops.
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