Nobody Home at Chairman Mao’s

As we get closer to going home we are trying to make sure we see as much of Beijing as possible. Two weekends ago we met Don & Eve and visited the Dirt Market. The Dirt Market is renown for selling antiques and collectibles and just plain junk – kind of like a giant flea market where you can also buy a 5-ton sculpture for your garden. I am not sure why it is called the Dirt Market – maybe because a lot of the wares are displayed on the ground. Anyway, it is one of the must-visit markets in Beijing and all of the inveterate shoppers on our staff had already been. We resisted the temptation of going because by the time we got around to it, it was already cold and we planned to wait until it warmed up. Anyway the day we picked was a gloriously sunny warm spring day with highs around 20 degrees. So we have now filled that hole in our Beijing shopping experience. The treasures we came home with include a piece of pottery and a painting – both good “deals”!

Today, we went off to see Chairman Mao, who lies in state in a mausoleum on Tiananmen Square. We met Don & Eve bright and early only to discover that the mausoleum was closed for repair until September. So we will be leaving Beijing without visiting Mao! We improvised the morning by taking Don and Eve to see Liulichang, an antique street south of Tiananmen where we had bought some paintings. We poked around in the hutong there and stopped for a wonderful brunch at a backpackers hostel. Afterwards we took a cab up to the north gate of the Forbidden City to visit the gardens and take a picture of the infamous Starbucks within the Forbidden City – one of the ‘features’ of Chinese tourist attractions is that there are often restaurants and souvenir shops within the gates. Many Chinese feel that the Starbucks in the Forbidden City cheapens the place and they may be right. Then we walked over towards the Wangfujing shopping area in order to find the famous night market, which is a long row of food stalls selling deep-fried scorpion and other exotic snacks. We decided that this would be our next Friday night dinner spot. I wonder if we will have to go somewhere to eat, after we eat? We continued to poke around Wangfujing, spending quite a while in the foreign language bookstore there, then cabbed home about 3 PM.

One of the frustrating things about shopping in the markets in Beijing is that it is hard to tell what the actual value of anything is. Prices are rarely marked on anything and if you ask the price, the vendor will give you whatever price sounds good to him. The asking price is often 10 times or more the actual selling price. As obvious foreigners, of course, we are all fabulously wealthy and it is well known that we throw money around like fools! We were quick to catch on to this thinking, but it still is hard to bargain if you don’t know the real price. If someone is asking 400, it feels wrong to offer him 40; but often this is what you have to do. Some vendors will tell you that the real price is 500, but that since you are their newfound friend, they will only ask 460. This for the same item that should sell for 40! Another strategy is that the vendor will offer you the ubiquitous calculator and ask you to punch in your price. You must realize that if you punch in a number, this is considered an offer and only a real idiot would not realize this. One strategy is to punch in what you feel the price should be and stick to it. This can be difficult to do in the face of cries of “You’re killing me!” from the vendors. My tactic at this point is to just walk away, if you are not getting the right price. Usually there is the same merchandise for sale within 10 meters and often the price will drop dramatically as you get a few feet away. Some vendors will attempt to call you back with a lower price, chase you or physically restrain you. This can be quite a sight – imagine a 90-pound girl trying to hold back a 200-pound man! Because of all this, price shopping as we know it is pretty hard to do. Thus there is much trading of information among our staff. When someone shows up with something new, the first question is, “How much did you pay?” followed by, “Where did you get it?” So we are getting better at bargaining and knowing the real price, but sometimes you just want to buy something and not spend ten minutes haggling.

So shopping can chew up a lot of time in China. Another factor is that there is really no such thing as the Superstore. For instance, to do our weekly grocery shopping, we typically go to 4 or 5 different shops. We go to 2 or 3 different grocery stores each of which offers some but not all of the ‘exotic’ western foods we like. We go to a fruit and vegetable market where we get the best prices on produce. We go to another German specialty store where we buy cheese and meat. And finally, we go to a bakery where we buy all our bread – good bread and baked goods are quite difficult to find. Oh yeah, and there is also another place where we buy our water – you can’t drink the tap water here at all. On top of this, we are usually walking at least one way and taxiing back. Also because we have a smallish refrigerator, we must go shopping every few days. So there is nothing efficient about shopping in China and sometimes I think it will be great just to see the old Superstore again.