Shopping

When people talk about shopping in Beijing, they're probably talking about the "Pearl Market." They do actually have some pearl stores there, but it's mostly knock-off clothes, electronics, fake, and stuff of dubious quality. Buyer beware rules. It's up to you to know if you're getting an unbelievable good deal on freshwater pearls, or a really bad deal on some beads.

Haggling is expected and intense. Asking "how much" is not a good way to try to get an idea of how much something sells for. It is just an opening to negotiations.



Sales can be high pressure. Vendors may shout for your attention. Some actually grabbed my arm to keep me from leaving their booths.




Another shopping experience is the flea market. Vendors bring their merchandise in and set up small booths, often with reproductions and knick-knacks. There might be some genuine antiques, but probably not anything really old. It's illegal to try to take cultural artifacts out of the country. Fortunately, the really old-looking stuff here is probably a reproduction.





Antique word processor and calculator. I wonder where the NATO ammo can came from.


In downtown Beijing, there are shopping malls that look as nice and modern as anything in the US.



There might not be escalators in the subway stations or Olympic stadiums, but the capitalists who built the malls included them.



While in Xi'an, we saw a Home Depot. I really would have liked to look around in it, but there wasn't time. It would have been neat to see metric 2x4s and drywall.