I Visited a Liminal Space Chinese Store

Shopping misadventures

So a few days ago my sister and I went to downtown to look for stuff for her business, you see she sells Sylvanian Families / Calico Critters and she has a expo next month, so she needed stuff to decorate her stand. She has already participated in an expo once so she has almost all the stuff she needs, but so she doesn’t repeat herself and because she needs to display more sylvanians, she needed more stuff.

To be specific, she wanted some baskets that could display the off-brand version of sylvanians, which are commonly known in the community as chafarines¹.

So where to get the best and easy decorations than in… TEMU?!?!?

Yeah, my sister decided to look for online shopping first, but we convinced her its easier to get some from downtown.

So off we go and the first place we go to, which was also a chinese store, doesn’t have the baskets we want. They had acrillic holders and stuff to place in your bathroom, but not stuff worthy of displays.

We then decided to go another shop located some squares away and on the same street, we walked peacefully until we found it. That store. The one that’s relevant to this blog post.

It was located on the other side of the street, next to a bakery and another store, it didn’t have anything special to make it pop up. Just their logo on the front of the building and windows displays covering the magic hidden inside.

The cashier greeted us as we entered the store. The hallways were thin and full of stuff, from office supplies, cheap makeup, UNO play sets (we almost bought the Hello Kitty Edition), and some pokemon trading card packages.

But that wasn’t the only thing in the store, no, there was more inside! Moving futher inside the arrangement of the shelves changed to a vertical layout (if you’re looking from the entrance) and now they reached almost full height, and they now were displaying other cool stuff, like electronics, underwear, themed bottles, beauty products, and plastic bags. My sister in the end bought one with a Hello Kitty and a bottle, and I would have bought a night stand of an astronaut if I had brought money with me.

Rough pixel art recreation of the night stand in question. It had a glittery blue liquid, a floating astronaut and lights which could be switched on for a cool effect.

We then discovered the hallway. It was horizontal and connected by a small archway in the center of it. Inside here there was even more stuff! Not many actually, as the width was around a meter; here there were some toys and plushies; nothing out of the ordinary.

Except, this hallway connected to the back side of the store! THIS THING WAS DEEPER THAN WE THOUGHT!

At this point my sister exclaimed this was a liminal space back room, to which I agreed (can’t argue with her logic, this is the first time we ever saw the store in our lives, and you’re telling me it is bigger on the inside?!?). At this point we decided to not loose sight of each other, just in case.

In this third area there were cooking pans and tons plastic stuff, and to the right side the baskets we wanted were waiting for us! We bought two short white ones with pink handles, and we believed that was it for our journey. Except it was not.

A rough pixel art recreation of one of baskets we bought.

Becuase next to the plastic section, there was another area! This time there was a small staircase (which most likely lead to the storage area, since the door it lead to was one of those plastic overhang ones you see in grocery stores), and below that another room! This one was the final area in the store, and displayed fake plants and related stuff.

Have I told you the shop was not ventilated at all? This final area smell so hard like plastic and rubber it made my sister feel sick from entering!

After briefly looking into this area, we finally decided to bolt out of there.

We paid for the baskets (only $60 MXN, nice!) and went straight for the bus stop. On our way we joked about our experience and the slim possibility that we might have entered an alternative version of our world or landed in a different time than the present. Thankfully none of that happened. I think.

I got lost by your description! Can I have a map?

Sure! Have this ASCII map:

||----------------||
||########|[     [||
||########|[  [  [||
||########|[  [  [||
||########|[     [||
||--------|-#--vv-||
||[         ^  vv[||
||[  [  [  [  [  [||
||[  [  [  [  [  [||
||[              [||
||-------  -------||
||[´´´´´´  ´´´´´´[||
||-------  -------||
||[              [||
||[  [  [  [  [  [||
||[  [  [  [  [  [||
||[  [  [  [  [  [||
||[              [||
||[ ´´´´´´´      [||
||[ ´´´´´´´    ! [||
||[ ´´´´´´´    ! [||
||//////////|  |//||

NOTATION:

    | Vertical wall
    - Horizontal wall
    [ Vertical shelves
    ´ Horizontal shelves
    ! Cashier stand
    # Unaccesable area / Storage
    ^ Upwards stairway
    v Downwards stairway
    / Window filled with stuff

Map is not to scale, so its more like a sketch.