A nice Tommy Bahama 100% silk shirt with the shell buttons and everything (for me).
Not 1, not 2, but 3 beautiful 100% silk blouses for Misty!
A very nice Polo sweater for me, a 100% cashmere (sp?) Polo sweater, and a Paul Smith shirt. wow. This is the place to shop.
My first hard day of work here (gave a 1.5 hour presentation to 250 software engineers), I went to a very fancy lunch with a co-worker. He ordered spicy rabbit (it was pretty yucky (the rabbit was rubbery but the spice was tasty), Fish (and you get the whole fish, they have big tanks, you pick a fish, they grap it and pull it out and gut it then cook it....and it was DELISH!), and peking duck (again the whole, cleaned entire duck is put on your place with head and all), which was also super DELISH. Then I went shopping. What a riot. I took a local from work with me to help me get started (a non-smoker! But he's a US citizen now, lived 20 years in US), who told me to bid no more than 10% of the asking price on each item, and hold my ground. I did, and it was terrible at the start, they mocked me! They made me feel like a fool. Then when I tried to leave they would physically hold me! Tight. I was seriously trying to pull away like a tug-of-war...and eventually they'd come all way down to my price....and then after they got my money they would go even lower to try to get me to buy more. Darn them! Always felt like I could have gotten a little bit lower price. Misty's first silk shirt (I tried to buy just 1), haggled from $210 to $20. Then the lady accosted me as I tried to leave and forced me to take 2 more for $20 (total). Tried to convince me I needed "2 for wife, 1 for girlfriend." I said I had no girlfriend. She looked at me very skeptically and said "rich man have no girlfriend in China? Why?" Weird eh? You do see plenty o' American men walking the streets with a Chinese girlfriend on his arm. I was laughing my head off for 2 hours shopping, they will not leave you alone once you stop and take a look at their wares. It was so fun. I was super scared to haggle hard when I started at the silk blouse store, but I gained a loot of confidence as I went, and I felt pro by about my 4th purchase. Totally fun, I really wish all of you were here to shop/haggle with me. We'd have a ball. But be prepared to physically pull people's hands off you. This may be my last installment in China, gotta a couple of 5-6 hour days coming up of work/meetings, and I don't really know what else to go see. I'll see what I can find in Chengdu at the end of the week.
10 comments:
$210 to $20?! that's nuts! did you tell her about the great plan of happiness, and that's why you had no girlfriend? give her a BOM? that woulda been PERFECT opportunity to open up china to the missionaries!! heh heh heh...
by the way, when will you ever wear a silk shirt?!
awesome. Where do vendors get their stuff themselves that they can sell it so cheap?
And I'll bet those Rolex watches are "the real thing". After all, there are no "knockoffs" in China! Sounds like things are going well for you.
Dad
I think the vendors get their stuff from the land of china. low shipping costs. looks and feels like the real thing!
and I'll wear my new silk shirt every week! I already have one silk TB shirt, but unfortunately I paid the full $110 price for it in the sorry USA.
That's hilarious!
Can you get me some nice polo sweaters? I'll pay you for them. PLus I'll pay for an itouch too! PLEASE get me an itouch and some polo stuff...I wear medium!
-james
Can you get me a rolex or gucci watch? The gucci one I want looks sort of like a silver bracelet and the watch face is square. Thanks!
Sounds like you're having fun!
I don't plan to get back to that market, I work all day today and tomorrow up until my flight to Chengdu! I did grap a web address from one of the watch vendors though, you email them a picture of the watch you want, they will ship you an identical fake for $20-30!
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