On the Bargain Road

1
Jul
2008

One of my more embarrassing moments as a student of Chinese came not here in China but back in Maine in the fall of 1998, when I returned from a year in Beijing to the University of Maine at Farmington along with a teacher from the Chinese department of Beijing University of Technology. As I’d known this professor prior to her year as a visiting scholar, I’d taken it upon myself to act as her guide, driver, and concierge while in the US, at least when I had the time and wasn’t otherwise involved in my studies. It was a good arrangement for us both, as I was able to keep my Chinese skills up to snuff and she was able to get out and do some shopping in a country where car ownership is pretty much essential. I was unprepared, however, for just how much of her Chinese heritage she’d brought with her. I had dropped of Wang laoshi in a box clothing store while I went to do some groceries, returning 10 or 15 minutes later. To my everlasting horror, when I walked up to her, I found her engrossed in a conversation with the clerk, not talking about sizes or fits or styles; no, she was bargaining!

Bargaining in China is one of those skills that’s essential for survival here. The Chinese bargain at vegetable stands, grocery stores, restaurants… pretty much everywhere. In some places, bargaining isn’t just recommended, it’s expected. Places sometimes have signs in English reading “No Bargaining! All Prices are Final!” although such signs are more often than not simply another tactic at getting the highest possible price. And while the China of 1998 certainly is much different from the China of 2008, bargaining is still very much part of the accepted practice and being lihai at bargaining is a skill which will never let you down. Let’s take a look at a couple different examples.

Of the commercial enterprises that somehow manage to make the tourist’s guide to Beijing, at the top of the list are Silk Street (which used to be an actual street near the American embassy but is now in a building) and the hongqiao pearl market. With the disproportionate number of tourists who visit these places, looking for knockoff goods from Prada purses to iPods, come disproportionate prices. What goes through the storekeepers mind the moment they lay eyes on you is what will determine the opening price on that knockoff Columbia jacket you’ve got your eyes on. If you are a local, you’ll get their cheapest opening offer. If you’re a Chinese but from another part of China (speak with an accent), you’ll get their second lowest offer. If you’re a foreigner with semi-fluent to fluent Chinese who has obviously lived or spent a lot of time in China (and consequently should know about what these things ought to cost), you’ll get their third lowest opening price. Lastly, if you are a bumbling foreigner who uses lots of hand signs and the calculator (omnipresent) to bargain, you’re going to get the hose, as whatever is being offered will already be offered at a price somewhat cheaper than you can have it – the authentic deal, keep in mind – in the U.S. It’s just the way it is. Keeping a few things in mind, however, will keep you from getting soaked.

First, if you are the Olympic tourist straight off the plane and negotiate in broken English because it sounds more Chinese-y, and you’re shopping at the Silk Market, your opening price is going to be about 8 – 10 times more than the shopkeeper would be willing to accept. This, actually, can even pertain to standard foreigners even if they speak Chinese. The Silk Market just operates this way.

For example:

Ryan: How much for this jacket?

Shopkeeper: This jacket? It’s of the highest quality, a really nice jacket.

Ryan: Yes, but how much?

Shopkeeper: If you want it, because you speak such amazing Chinese, I’m going to give it to you for a very low price. It’s 1200 RMB.

Ryan, laughing: You must be joking. I’ll give you 50 RMB.

Shopkeeper: You are trying to insult me? I could never accept such a price. But since you are such an old hand at this, I will let you take it for 700RMB.

Ryan: I like the jacket, and I like you, but I could not live with myself if I gave more than 100 RMB for this jacket. It’s obviously a fake.

Shopkeeper: Fake? No, it’s the real thing. Never mind that the tag says Ralph Lauren and the logo is North Face. But listen, you know about these clothes, so for you, I’m going to give you the special price of 450 RMB.

Ryan: No, no, no. I could not possibly go higher than 150 RMB, and only then because you are such a friendly person.

This could go on and on until a price is reached, usually about 75% off the original starting price. And granted, this is an extreme example as it is using xiushui and hongqiao, two of the most overpriced haggle-marts in Beijing, home to some of the more aggressive sales tactics seen outside of timeshare sales. It sounds ridiculous in English, but it is all part of the game, and in Chinese can even be fun. For the unaccustomed Westerner, it just takes some time to get used to, especially when trying to shave a few jiao off the price of market tomatoes. In the end, you will inevitably come away thinking that you could have gotten it down a little bit. A rule of thumb is that if the shopkeeper seems somewhat irritated with you after arriving at a price the both of you could accept, then you got a good deal. And even if you didn’t, remember, the price agreed to was acceptable to the both of you, even if both consumer and seller seem a little peeved.

Returning to Wang laoshi in the clothing store back in Maine, as I stood there completely mortified watching the manager come out from the back office to undoubtedly explain the way things operated here in the United States, I began to contemplate intervention. You could imagine my shock when instead of booting the both of us from the premises with a command to never return, the manager actually agreed to knocking a few dollars off the prices printed on the price tag there in the store. While I don’t think I could bring myself to going bargain hunting in a U.S. department store, my already high respect for Chinese fortitude and bargaining skills shot up considerably.

Here’s an interesting article for some further reading on what negotiating in China is all about.
http://www.jazzviolin.com/china/2007/09/29/buying-things-how-to-negotiate-bargaining-in-china/

Useful Words and Phrases:

厉害 This is one of those words that can be interpreted in many different ways and really has no direct translation into English except in the context you’re working with. Here’s the definition direct from www.nciku.com, one of the better Chinese/English/Chinese dictionaries on the Net.
1. (of a wild animal or of one’s temper , words , etc .) fierce ; terrible
2. (of a person ) strict ; stern ; harsh
3. (of illness , heat , cold , etc .) intense ; severe ; terrible
4. heavily

秀水市场 Silk Street Market
红桥市场 The Pearl Market
太贵了! It’s too expensive!
这是假的 This is fake
给我便宜一点儿 Can you make it any cheaper?
买不买？ Will you buy it?


By admin | Posted in Culture, Uncategorized | Comments (7)

Park Life

24
Jun
2008

When spring rolls around in Beijing, it means more than just the appearance of green  after months of grey and early darkness, more than singing birds and flowers and the occasional rain shower.  To old school Beijinger’s, springtime means the beginning of park time, and Beijing’s many parks begin to show signs of life after barely stirring during the winter months.
There are a million reasons to go to Beijing’s parks for the average city resident, myself included.  Chief among those reasons is the desire to see the color green and to escape the seemingly inescapable hum of the city, blaring of cars, and squash of teeming people so omnipresent throughout the city.   Whether they are free or it’s necessary to pay a few jiao for a ticket, once inside a city park, the atmosphere outside just melts away. It’s no wonder that parks are such a popular place for the elderly, who seem to show up in them at the crack of dawn and don’t leave until past dark.  On a day where it just makes sense to get out of the city – without actually getting out of the city – a retreat to Ritan, Beihai, or Xiangshan seems to make perfect sense.  And seeing the types of activities that go on in the parks in the spring and summer months makes them all the more interesting to visit.
Read More »


By admin | Posted in Culture | Comments (1)

The Mother of All Tests

19
Jun
2008

Things that China lacks: oil, a decent network of highways, a quality control system for food and drugs, clean air in its cities.  One thing that China absolutely does not lack: people.  Everywhere you go in China, with the exception of some of the more sparsely populated Western provinces, you can’t help but feel surrounded by humanity.  From the early hours of the morning until late in the evening, Chinese cities are teeming with them, from the very young to the very old. But spend any time in Beijing or elsewhere and you’ll begin to notice the absence of one particular age group: kids from middle school to high school age.  During the school year, if you see them, they are either on their way to school or on their way home.  Kids in this age group have school for about 6 hours per day, then have an average of 6 hours of homework every night. When Chinese students reach the age of 10 or so, they simply vanish, not to reappear until after they’ve sat for the test that will determine pretty much their entire future – their career, their financial status, everything.  Just imagine that the 8-10 years of primary school through high school is nothing more than preparation for a two-day exam, known as the gaokao, with the direction of your life hanging in the balance.  Each year, millions of high school kids complete the test in competition for a place in the countries universities, institutions which can accommodate only about 60% of their numbers.  Now that’s pressure.

If you want to read more about this test of tests, check out this excellent article by Manuela Zoninsein in Slate.


By admin | Posted in Culture | Comments (0)

Examining the Chinese Menu

12
Jun
2008

The first thing you learn: nobody’s even heard of General Tsao’s chicken. Negative on the tangerine chicken as well, and the shrimp lo mein is nowhere to be found. The good news is, there’s mooshu pork a plenty, but if you’re going to survive for very long, you’d better have some idea of what to expect in your typical Chinese greasy spoon, especially if you’re a student, on a budget, or otherwise trying to fit into the average Chinese person’s daily routine.

Within hours of a Beijing arrival, or arrival anywhere in the north of China for that matter, a visit to a typical Chinese restaurant could be the first place outside of your accommodations on your sightseeing agenda, and a glance at the menu won’t bring back memories of the takeout place back home, places that, if I memory serves me correctly, are invariably called “Great Wall” or “Ming Garden” or some variation thereof, all promising a tasty bounty of inedible red food of which you will eat approximately half. No, the real deal is much less hygienic, and certainly not FDA certified. That said, real Chinese food bears very little resemblance to the scrumptious cuisine served in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Western world, and in this reviewer’s opinion, is much the better for it.
Read More »


By admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Misunderstandings: Do You Want it Or Not?

8
Jun
2008

When I first started coming to China and getting involved speaking Chinese on a daily basis, I was often confronted with a situation in which I thought I knew what was being said because I understood each of the words used. It’s an easy approach if you’re translating directly, but direct translation has its faults. Often, it will lead to misunderstanding and get you into a bit of trouble that with a more perfect understanding you would have been able to avoid.

One standout example is the phrase

要不要？
Yào bù yào?

Now translated directly, this means “want no want,” which to me came out to something very close to “Do you want it or not?” Walking down a street full of vendors in Yabaolu (雅宝路), each of whom shouts at you “do you want it or not?” over and over again even after you’ve passed on by can be, and has been, interpreted as both annoying and aggressive. Add to that the onslaught of another variant on the phrase:
Read More »


By admin | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (1)

Flying Pigeons Forever

3
Jun
2008

More than any other city in any other country on earth, Beijing is a bicycle town. It is home to more than 10 million bikes and is accommodating to its bikers. Every road has a wide, sometimes very wide, bicycle lane on each side, and Beijingers make sure that the space is used. At all hours of the day, but especially for the several hours each morning and evening that comprise rush hour, bicycle lanes throughout the city are swarmed with riders. Riding a bike in China is not at all about being an environmentalist. You don’t ride for your health, or to make a statement. Since the days of the revolution, the Chinese ride because they need to get places.

Of the 100 million bicycles produced in the world every year, over a quarter of them are produced in Tianjin, a city about an hour’s train ride southeast of Beijing. While the city itself does not have much to offer, in the cyclist’s mind, it does produce at least one glorious product: the Flying Pigeon (Feige) bicycle. Fifty pounds of iron with rod brakes and little stopping power, the gearless Flying Pigeon was once the most ubiquitous bicycle in China. Deng Xiao Ping, Mao’s successor and the architect of China’s transition from a purely socialist command economy to a “socialist market economy” himself made the Henry Ford like declaration “A Flying Pigeon in every household” to showcase what economic progress had in store for the Chinese people. The company complied, offering the bike in any color you like, so long as it’s black. The Flying Pigeon’s chief competition, the Forever (Yongjiu) brand bicycle, looks very much the same: large tires, fenders, chain guard, kickstand, irritating bell, back package carrier, and handlebar basket. Together, the two brands serve to clog the bicycle arteries of Beijing and other biker friendly cities throughout China.
Read More »


By admin | Posted in Culture | Comments (0)

The Chatty Beijing Taxi Driver

29
May
2008

It’s 6:30am when Wang Zhifeng steps out of his 14th floor 1200 RMB/month apartment in the Haidian district , waving goodbye to his wife as he closes the door behind him and lighting up a Double Happiness cigarette on the way to the elevator, elbowing-grabbing his fruit jar of green tea to do so. Ling, the elevator lady, is already at her chair in the elevator, hard at work knitting a new pair of socks for her niece, the same position she’ll occupy for the next 12 hours pushing the buttons to take people up and down. Even though they’ve lived in the building for years, they exchange no pleasantries, as is their custom, and Wang Zhifeng smokes his cigarette the whole way down. The lights in the hallway still aren’t working and the paint is peeling off the ceiling, but it’s home, and Wang Zhifeng steps out into the daylight and heads to his cab, a shiny new Volkswagen that he rents from one of the many taxi companies in Beijing and splits in 12 hours shifts with his next door neighbor. It’s not cloudy, but there’s a haze of pollution and it’s going to be another long day in Beijing traffic. Nestling his tea jar into the space beside the passenger seat with the emergency brake, he drives for a couple minutes to the end of the street with a stop by the jianbing (an oniony egg crepe around a crunchy fried dough) stand for a quick breakfast. For the next 3 hours, he tackles stop and go traffic driving a businessman to work in Dongdan, an elderly couple to Beijing’s West Train Station, and several minutes just driving around looking for the next fare: Me.
Read More »


By admin | Posted in Culture | Comments (0)

The Chinese Classroom

21
May
2008

At first glance, it’s the picture of a certain ideal: a teacher standing at the head of a classroom with a piece of chalk in one hand, the students listening attentively and hanging on the teacher’s every word.  The students are quiet and reasonably well behaved, repeat like a chorus what the teacher asks them to repeat, and are otherwise silent while the teacher lectures. They ask no questions, and the teacher infrequently asks them to answer questions individually. More frequently, the class answers en mass. This is the picture of a typical Chinese classroom. It is has been this way for generations and the role of the teacher in China is at the heart of it.
Read More »


By admin | Posted in Politics and Diplomacy | Comments (9)

Surviving the Banquet

19
May
2008

“Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson

The art of the business deal here in China goes one step further than the boardroom, and it’s in the arena of the banquet hall that many a deal can be made or unmade. A banquet is a way of bestowing respect on a visiting business partner, and should be an expected part of the business experience in China. Indeed, the Chinese put a great deal of importance on the building of relationships, a term that is best understood through the catchall term guanxi, and it is during the banquet that guanxi is established. In fact, it may be that the real decision makers of a Chinese firm will only appear during one of these events to judge the steel of their potential business partners, to see if their partners are compatible on a personal level. Beware, though, because the Chinese banquet is often a long, arduous undertaking involving a great deal of food which may not be familiar to the Western palate, a great deal of toasting with baijiu, just about the closest thing to real firewater out there, and what one might assume to be a friendly after work dinner party can quickly become what looks like ritualized hazing. Here are a few pointers on what to expect, mastering the etiquette, and how to get through a banquet anywhere in the Middle Kingdom, from Harbin to Guangzhou.

1. The business card, or mingxingpian:
Chances are you’re going to meet people who you haven’t met before the banquet truly begins. Be prepared with your business cards, and don’t make the mistake of giving it to the recipient one handed or off the cuff. Chinese present their cards the way they would present themselves: with respect and humility. Use both hands to present your business card, and the recipient will receive it in the same way. Give and receive with a ni hao and a xie xie, respectively.

Read More »


By admin | Posted in Business, Byki Lists | Comments (1)

The Earthquake

13
May
2008

Letter Home, May 12, 6:44pm

Just wanted to let you know all is well here in Beijing. Of course, why wouldn’t it be? Well, I was sitting here this afternoon on my couch on the 18th floor when I started to feel like maybe I was a little drunk. Or dizzy. Or dreaming. You see, the whole building was SWAYING. I stood up and hoped the sensation would pass, but it didn’t, and the lights were clinking together and the doors were swinging back and forth and the laundry hanging by the window was dancing and that’s when it occurred to me that what we had here was an earthquake. I ran to tell Oscar, my Spanish roommate, in his room that it was an earthquake and I was fleeing the premises. He was sitting there watching something or other on his computer and laughing at the screen and was generally oblivious, as he’d thought that the sensation was just shifting in his chair. I think that my wild-eyed panic scared him into action, but I can’t be sure, because I was out the door and running into the hall so fast, all I had time for was to grab my wallet, keys, and let’s not forget the cigarettes. As I hightailed it out of there, I practically collided with a Mexican guy from our floor who was running to our place to find out what was happening. So I fled the building, taking out 18 flights of stairs in about 1 minute flat. Came barreling out the front door of my apartment building into a scene of pure and utter… normalcy. There was nobody out there. I thought I’d been dreaming, but Oscar and the Mexican guy followed about 1 minute later, and it wasn’t until five minutes afterwards that others trickled out. Not many, mind you, just a few who had places on the top floors. Mostly foreigners too, people from places that had some experience with shifting earth. Central Asians, Mexicans. People on the lower floors hadn’t felt anything and didn’t come out. It was bizarre and I felt like a bit of a coward, but after all, nobody ever died from being a coward. I vote with my survival instinct. I went back inside about 20 minutes later, got a call from my Chinese friend out in Qinghai province who said they’d had the earthquake out there as well. Apparently the epicenter was out in the Chengdu area of Sichuan, and there’s something like 100 people dead with the toll supposed to go quite a bit higher. Magnitude 7.8 out there. Something like 3.9 here. I’ll check out the news tonight and report back. But wow, it was mighty scary.

The Reality

The New China News Agency News Agency (Xinhua), 24 hours after writing the above letter, is reporting that the quake in Sichuan was much, much more devastating than I had originally guessed. While I smile about how I hightail it out of a highrise to save my own skin, there’s really nothing funny about what’s happened in the West. My little tremor here in Beijing was nothing compared to the magnitude of the destruction and loss of life in Sichuan province. Estimates are of 12,000 dead with close to another 20,000 people missing in Mianyang City and Mianzhu village, in the county of Wenchuan at the earthquakes epicenter. The Chinese authorities are working through the night and rain to reach survivors, and have welcomed foreign aid. It’s been a rough year for China so far.


By admin | Posted in News | Comments (0)