The other day, Mel
and I visited the Hongqiao Market or the Pearl Market, which is this huge
indoor market filled with everything from electronics, handbags, shoes,
souvenirs, jewelry and well...pearls…thousands and thousands of strands of
pearls. This place is absolutely nuts. As soon as you walk in you have 4 foot
Chinese ladies waving selfie sticks in your face and yelling SELFIE!!!! I never
thought a 4 foot Chinese lady would be intimidating, but these women are fierce
and persistent. We practically run through the electronics section and enter
into the section with yards of fabric and scarves and more 4-foot Chinese
ladies. As soon as you show interest in something you have their undivided
attention and they're literally throwing shit at you telling you they will give
you the best price. Mel and I take some interest in some scarves (I mean of
course, I only own about 300 of them) and we're digging through piles and piles
of them. I find one I like and I ask how much. Now up to this point, people
that speak English here are pretty much nonexistent except for our translators.
I'm wondering how we're going to start negotiating on price if they don't speak
English, but we come to find that all the vendors at the Pearl Market speak
very good English compared to the rest of the country or even where I work.
[Sidebar: I know
it may sound ignorant that I am mentioning that people "don't speak
English" and I literally know 6 words in Chinese, but a very comforting
thing here is that the Chinese do not expect you to be able to speak Chinese in
their country, and they will go out of their way to help you because of this
language barrier. That is a far cry and the absolute total opposite of some
other asshole country named Amurica where everyone expects you to speak English
if you are visiting. End sidebar].
There are
two universal languages in this world. One is love. The other is money. As I
said, most vendors can speak pretty good English, but every one of them has a
calculator at their stand and you type what you want to pay into the
calculator. There are two ways to go about this, the first way is the vendor
types in what they want you to pay. Everything that I was told and everything
that I read said to cut their price by at least half. So if they're asking 100RMB,
you offer 50RMB. Because I am an asshole, I offered roughly 25% RMB to everyone
and worked my way from there. The second way is they ask you what you want to
pay. So of course I have zero concept of what things actually cost, so I just
say a very low number for this way too. For example, I type 50RMB into the
calculator. They look at it then laugh, some say "oooh nooo" then
type in what they actually want. Some will get angry at what you offer, and I
actually had one lady tell me that she was trying to make a living, to which I
replied, you asked me what I wanted to pay and I told you, you can't get mad
when it's not what you want (insert laughing crying face emoji).
After a few rounds
of this, Mel and I developed a system. Working in pairs seems to have its
advantages. If I was looking to buy something and negotiate, the vendor would
type the asking price into the calculator. I would then repeat the price to Mel
and she would laugh, wave her hand and go noooo, too expensive! Then the
vendor would type in a cheaper price and we'd repeat the routine all over
again. The third time around, I would type in what I would want to pay (25% of
the asking price) and then the vendor would pretend to fall over from my
lowball price. I'd then say, "ok, nevermind" and start to walk away.
As soon as they see you walking away, then panic and come down to your price or go
a little higher than what you offered. Depending on what I was buying, I
might just give them the last counter offer because it was literally a $2-3 US
dollar difference. Other times, I would say no, that was my final offer or I'm
out. They almost always give you want you want…we literally had one lady
scream, "OK, OK, OK! I give you the price" just so she wouldn't lose
the sale to someone nearby who is selling the same stuff. We also developed
another strategy where we would come up with a lowball price and then say,
"that guy over there was giving it to us for 50RMB." This strategy—yes
the strategy of lying through my teeth—was also very successful.
The rush and
the feeling that I get from bargaining with people like this is the exact
reason why I do not allow myself to gamble. I guess bargaining with someone is
a form of gambling, but I don't put it in the same category as going to Vegas
or AC. I get this endorphin rush from all the back and forth, and I love
the feeling I get when I win. And you all know how much I love winning.
Again, many reasons why gambling isn't in the cards for me (HA! I bet you didn't
see that pun coming).
So now let me tell
you about a part of the Pearl Marketing that every ex-pats calls "the
knock-knock" room. The knock-knock room isn't actually in the Pearl
Market, it's in the Jewelry Market building next door, and it's a hidden
section in the basement of the Jewelry building and it's only open to
foreigners. You basically need to go there with someone who has been
there before, or you get extremely precise directions from that someone
and attempt to find the door yourself. Mel and I were unable to go with someone
who had already been there, so our directions were as follows, "go down
the escalator 2 floors, go left to the end and make another left, keep
following the arrows on the floor and then you'll see fake leaves hanging on
plastic, you are looking for this (insert image that was texted to me), go
through and on the right is the door. Knock on it. (I will post on my FB
and Instagram accounts so you can see the actual door). So we follow these
directions and I walk through the curtain and then the door opens (ok, so
I didn't have to knock!). A guy waves us in and then shuts the door. We are
then lead into several different rooms of all containing high-end luxury goods. I
turned to Mel and in a million miles a minute was like, "is it hot in
here, I'm hot, yes, it's definitely hot in here, I'm sweating." And now
looking back...no jackass it was hot because your heart was pounding
through your chest and you were sweating your ass off because you just entered
a secret room in the basement of some market in China, that has a
hidden door that you need to knock to get into, and you can only be a foreigner
to get inside!
We were told that
these goods are all counterfeits, but I'm not so sure. The
merchandise that I was looking at was so well re-produced that I don't
think anyone but the person designing it would even know. Everything had
hangtags, official boxes, cases or bags. I'm pretty sure that I just bought
stolen merchandise and I only spent $200. I'm actually paranoid about writing
this...I'm totally getting nabbed at customs on my way home. I'm screwed. Come
visit me in jail.
No comments:
Post a Comment