GraemeNicol posted a photo:

Owner Wang Yuhua outside her boutique clothing store in Dalian's business district.

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Thirty years ago, the only shop in Dalian to sell foreign goods was its branch of the infamous state-run Friendship Store, located on People's Road. It was only open to foreigners and high-ranking cadres. Today however, the city centre is, like many wealthier cities in China, a shrine to consumerism, and imported foreign brands have permeated every aspect of Chinese urban life from Nokia phones, i-pods, Nike superstores, Loius Vuitton handbags.

The People's Road Friendship Store still operates, now at the heart of what has become Dalian's high-rise financial district, it's presence a quaint reminder of a China before capitalism. However, in a quiet back street behind the store, a new kind of foreign import is arriving, for a new type of customer and a new type of shop; the European-style clothing boutique.

The presence of such small shops, representing a move away from big brands to a more diverse and personal slant on globalisation is hardly breaking news to those familiar with Beijing or Shanghai, but it's a more recent new trend in second-tier cities like Dalian.

The owner of this shop is 61-year old Wang Yuhua, a retired hospital worker. She originally located here in 2004, using her savings to open a store for childrens clothes made from non-toxic dyes, but then after her son went to study in France and described the small boutiques in Paris, she decided in 2006 to open up a similar boutique next to her children's clothes shop. It's name "Romantic House" comes from a South Korean TV drama popular in China. At that time South Korean fashion was also very popular.

In 2008 though European styles are preferred, and so these days most of her clothes are imported from France, Italy and Spain, some also from the USA, bought direct through contacts at the factories themselves, but she wouldn't say any more, laughing and telling me "It's a secret". She prides herself on offering up to date styles that can't be found elsewhere in Dalian, that are well made and use good material. This means her clothes are a little more expensive than their Chinese-made equivalents, but being so close to the business district, she has regular customers from the banks and offices, who have money to spend on their lunch breaks and on the way home from work. Most of her cutstomers are regulars, coming back often to check the new batch of clothes that arrive usually every ten days or so.

As well as Wang Yuhua's shop, there is another boutique next door, which was already opened when she arrived. Its owner doesn't have the overseas contacts, and mostly sells clothes designed and made in China, slightly cheaper. She says there is a little competition between the two shops, but their ranges are slightly different, so really they co-operate more than they compete, and have become good friends. She said she opened the shop for fun and to provide a service, and it certainly seems she is succeeding on both counts.