SHANGHAI - Madora Parmentier squinted her eyes at the fabric compressed on the massive loom, the brief stretch of design at the bottom a flawless match to the blueprint above.

"I'm amazed. Absolutely amazed," the former embroidery teacher said.

Folks gawked at both the craftsmanship and the prices at a Shanghai silk rug shop they toured.

They shuffled behind female workers - no men allowed, due to the sex's lack of patience - who stood behind looms strung tight as harp strings.

They snuck glances over the shoulder of a woman embossing a silk rug with electric scissors, the droning sound filling the room.

"You'd think her arm would get tired," Elaine Stevens commented. "I always wondered how they did that. I figured it was with different types of threads."

But the rugs that take several months to years of weaving don't come cheap.

A salesman twisted three small rugs to show how the colors changed in the light, on account of the silk-on-silk design.

He pointed to each, listing $420 for the first, $720 for the second, and $2,300 for the third.

"Twenty-three hundred, for that little one?" Lowell Stevens asked his wife, Elaine.

"Yup," she replied, snapping a photo.

"You ain't getting nothin,'" he said.

It was the general consensus as members of the tour group milled around the sales floor, where tapestries blanketed the walls.

"They're amazing, especially the silk on silk," said Sharon Hanson. "But with our lifestyle? It would be on the wall, and I'd never touch it."

Marilee Wallace nodded as a saleswoman unfurled a shimmering flowered tapestry.

"Beautiful. I love it," the Coeur d'Alene woman said, then added: "Beijing took all my money."

But Parmentier, a self declared pragmatist, surprised her friends by purchasing a $2,700 carpet.

She had planned on such a luxury for the new addition to their Coeur d'Alene home, she said.

"It's something we'll enjoy forever, and I think my daughter will enjoy it when we're not using it anymore," she said. "But I should've checked on the prices ahead of time."