rail station at about 8:30 in the morning. I took the subway for
about 45 minutes and landed in the northwest corner of Tiananmen
Square. I had once walked by the Gate of Heavenly Peace, an
absolutely giant gate that leads toward the Forbidden City, and had
briefly seen the square from there, but hadn't entered. The square
is, quite simply, vast. The north is flanked by the aforementioned
Gate of Heavenly Peace, to the west is a massive hall where the
People's Congress meets, and to the east is an equally-large museum.
A monument (a stone pillar) stands in the center of the northern part,
and Mao's mausoleum dominates the center. I joined the line to enter
the monument, but left when I saw just how long it was (doubling back
over a large fraction of Tiananmen). South of the mausoleum are two
giant gates, which I think show where the city walls were earlier. In
the square itself were lots of people, some walking around like I
were, and some just sitting there under umbrellas; I don't know what
for. Water sellers were prevalent, as were sellers of boxes of ice
cream sticks, which were somehow always cold, though I never saw a
fridge or freezer nearby. I started from Heavenly Peace to the north
and made my way south, noting the Soviet/European style architecture
to the sides of the square.
At Qianmen gate, one of the large gates at the south end, I found a
large street running south from there. It was wide, had no cars (but
a trolley), was very clean, and had faux-imperial-Beijing style
design. This was a shopping district, still under construction by the
looks of it. There were many American and European brands on the
storefronts, such as Haagen-Daas and Zara, and there were multiple
workers around keeping the street clean from any litter soon after it
was dropped. From there, there was an entrance to one of the more
well-travelled hutongs (alleys) of Beijing; a bigger, crowded (but not
too narrow) one which had loads of stores to the left and right such
as arts/crafts stores, dry-goods supermarkets, and clothing stores.
From there, paths to more hutongs branched off. I departed the main
hutong and looked down some of the side ones. These were even
narrower, and, in the region near the big hutong, had just as many
stores, but had fewer people (but were equally as crowded – the
narrower and fewer balanced out). Getting further away from the main
hutong, however, the streets got significantly less crowded. From one
of these side alleys, I walked into a very narrow, branching alley
with no shops. What most surprised me was the silence – though not
far away was the main street with lots of noisy shopping, this place
was very quiet.
I had originally planned to spend the afternoon exploring the
Forbidden City, but I decided to do some shopping instead, wanting to
flex my bargaining muscles a bit. I first took a bus one stop to
Wangfujing. This is a very upscale (and touristy) shopping region
centered around a wide pedestrian road, with TV-covered colorful
shopping malls to the side; however, it was not my final destination.
I went to a small alley to the side called Wangfujing Snack Street,
which not only has interesting (and cleaner, due to regulations, but
more expensive) street food, but also several curio sellers. I first
got lunch, which included trying "stinky" tofu (really, not bad at
all), some sort of fruit similar to a coconut where sellers drill a
hole in the shell and stick a straw in for you to drink the juice, and
a desert which consisted of a hot flour-and-water paste mixed with
sugar, sesame seeds, and dried fruit. The most famous items sold are
the skewers of odd meats fried and given to you, including scorpions
(still alive before frying), seahorses, and starfish, but there was
plenty of normal food as well, including all manner of sweet drinks,
eggy pancakes with vegetables, and plenty of standard Chinese and
Korean fare. Afterward, I went around and started trying bargaining
for things I didn't want as well as for things I did want. Some
things I discovered:
1. Sellers often sell exactly the same items.
I have seen dozens of sellers selling the exact same scroll
paintings, chopsticks, "antiques", etc.
2. The best way to get a seller to lower the price is to come to
agreement on a price, then suddenly turn around and walk away.
I discovered this by accident while practicing with things I didn't
want; I would reach my target for a given item, then drop everything
and turn around; they would then call towards me and start lowering it
even more, to prices I couldn't get through normal bargaining or when
I simply walked away before reaching an "agreement". My thoughts are
that once they say "OK", they've mentally committed to the deal, so
when you then walk away you have a "foot in the door" and they want to
finish the deal, even if it requires lowering the price even more.
I'm not sure if this will work in all circumstances, but it seemed to
work for me this afternoon.
3. The "1/3 rule" is misleading
I have heard of a rule that you should never pay more than one third
of what the seller wants. This is certainly true, but grossly
underestimates the seller's actual starting price – I was able to
bargain some items down to less than 1/10th of their initial asking
price. Sellers will ask ridiculously inflated prices, for example
asking hundreds of yuan for brown-paper Mao-era-style poster that I've
seen go for 3 yuan a poster elsewhere, or asking hundreds for
easily-mass-produced art scrolls.
4. The statement that "salsemen are pushy" is also misleading"
They are not just pushy; they will grab your hand and try to drag you
back when you start to walk away, especially after using point #2
described above. In some cases, I had to flatly state "don't touch
me."
I later headed out to one of the most famous free-for-all markets,
Silk Street Market. Housed in a large, multistory building, narrow
lanes separate multitudes of sellers all selling roughly the same
items. The first floors are standard clothes, such as jeans and
t-shirts, sports clothes and jackets; on the second and third floors
there are also rugs, carpets, silks, and materials for suits that will
be tailor-made for you. The upper floors have arts, crafts,
"antiques", and watches, sunglasses, and electronic stuff. I was
greeted with many "hello"s instead of "ni hao"s and was called out to
most of the time in English, as I am easily recognizable as a
foreigner (or at least definitely not Chinese). This enabled me to
have to have the fun experience of switching into Mandarin when their
English couldn't keep up with the conversation and seeing their
surprise. When I told some shopkeepers that I was looking for
t-shirts with terrible English, they even asked me to translate the
English on some of the t-shirts they sold and tell them if it was
correct or not, which I did until I came across one which had multiple
sentence fragments whose meaning I couldn't decipher – it could have
been a mistranslation, or it could have been a "fashion statement," I
really couldn't tell. A few hours later, I headed to a Xiabu Xiabu
hotpot chain restaurant for dinner, and took the subway across town to
get home.
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