Today I stopped by a mall to buy some new shoes. I really hate clothes shopping in China for the following reasons:
1. The stores are TOO SMALL
2. every way you turn there is something in front of your face (whether human being or object)
3. The shop owner is usually riding you the whole time (either just standing there awkwardly or chattering away and trying to direct your attention to heinous clothing)
4. There are no dressing rooms, so the shop owner either pulls a curtain across the door or holds a sheet up for you
5. Once you have on a particular piece of clothing, no matter how bad it looks on you, the shop owner tells you how beautiful it looks and helps you examine it.
6. If you like it , you then must ask the price and they will tell you something ridiculous. If you tell them it's too expensive, they start telling you about how the material is really good and how it was really expensive for them to buy. If you start walking away, then the calculator comes out. And that's when I don't care anymore and just want to get out of the store!
So now we come to: Lesson #1 - How to Bargain like a White Girl (I highly doubt there will be #2)
The trick - don't bargain at all.
So today when I was looking for shoes, I walked by a row of shoe stores and 2 woman said hello to me in English. I stopped and said hello, and then they started speaking to me in a little Chinese. There was a man selling shoes next to them, and he tried to talk to me but I really could not understand his speaking style at all. So then another shoe vendor who happened to know some English came over to help out a little. We tried to chat for a while, but I felt a little nervous and it was pretty difficult.
They really didn't seem to care whether I went in their store or not, but I figured I was there and they were nice so I might as well have a look. I found a pair that was decent- I didn't really love them but if they were cheap enough I'd buy them.
So as I was trying them on the woman wrote 38 on the calculator and I thought that was price (it would be about $5.75). I was surprised they were that cheap but I thought okay why not. Well after I got my wallet out to start paying the woman realized that I thought the 38 was the price while in reality it was just the shoe size. They got out the calculator and wrote 300 on it ($46). Of course I thought oh hellz no. I said said it was too expensive. They dropped the price down to 250 ($38). At that point, I am just thinking about the fact that I really didn't like the shoes very much in the first place, I didn't want to bargain with them, and I am not able to express to them that I really only wanted to buy the shoes if they were dirt cheap. So I just started telling them that was sorry and that I didn't want the shoes. The woman shoves the calculator in my face and asks me to write what price I feel is appropriate. Well, I really just wanted to write 38 like I originally thought the price was, but I knew that that was way too low for these shoes. So, not wanting to deal with the stress of the situation anymore, I refused to write a number on the calculator, and told them that I was too embarrassed, and that in America we didn't do this, so I didn't really know how and I was so embarrassed. haha, it's kind of ridiculous in hindsight. I tried to escape, but then the shoe-vendor-neighbor that spoke some English stepped in again and kept saying "it's okay, here, write." I refused and told them again that didn't like to do it and didn't want to and that I would return to their store later. I either used really bad Chinese or they couldn't understand why I was telling them that because they just stood there sort of dumbfounded. Finally, the woman just grabs the calculator and writes 80 ($12) on it and asks if that's okay. So now, I still don't really want to pay 80 for them, but I also was thinking about how kind it was of her to drop the price by 170 with out me doing anything at all, how nice they were being to me earlier, and how in the scheme of things, the price she was asking me for was the equivalent of $12. So I said okay. Then they kept telling me really seriously, "it's okay don't be embarrassed about bargaining, don't be embarrassed", haha. Well, I think my unintentional reverse bargaining worked pretty well, although I bet an experienced bargainer could have knocked another 20 off. Well whatever, the extra 20 that I have to pay is what you would call the 'foreigner discount' here.
So that concludes lesson #1! Hope you have learned something :P
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