After our cold morning, we decided temporarily ignore the Chinese culture putdoors and spend our afternoon indoors shopping(!). We went to YaShow an enormous indoor marketplace. I thought I would like to get a nice qipao (one of those Chinese silk dresses with a Mandarin collar) and YaShow we were told was a sure bet place to get one.It was extremely intimidating. Think of a 6 floor home depot filled with hundreds upon hundreds of stalls, all manned by extremely aggressive vendors. I quickly learned some unpleasant things. First, for a standard Chinese women I am huge. Ki-Ki, my sister, who is a size 2, was forced to wear a large; and when the saleswoman looked at my waist she said, "tai da!" which I'm pretty sure means "too big." She brought me an extra large and looked doubtful.
However, I did manage to squeeze into something...and then the games began. In China, haggling is an art form like no other. And as I was obviously a non-native (if my size didn't give it away, my completely incoherent Chinese did), I was an easy target for a swindle.
Luckily, our traveling companion Jen is not only better at Chinese but no fool either. When the saleswoman gave a price 3 times a normal price, Jen told us to walk away. We were stopped by the saleswoman who than offered another price, maybe 10 dollars less. We (uh, Jen) counter offered 1/3 of the price. Offer, counteroffer, offer, and then Jen told us to walk away again. This went on for two hours. Really. It was exhausting. I don't know how Chinese people actually buy anything. Perhaps that is how they keep from being so materialistic, one has to really work at purchasing. Anyway, we finally got it to a "decent" price and won the respect of the salesperson but after I calculated the savings in my head, I realized it might've been worth it just to pay the extra money so we could leave after 5 minutes instead.
But, looking back, as an experience in real Chinese culture, I suppose it was worth it.
(the outfit Ki-Ki bought... or won, depending on how you look at it)
