Larsen's Journey: Chinese shopping experience

Kyle is keeping you all posted as to the sites we saw while visiting China. Besides seeing all the sites and visiting Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie and Dede, the best part of our visit was the shopping. It was great. Both Kyle and Tiff are excellent barterers. Tiffany explained that we are really not taking advantage of any one of the vendors or ripping them off. They expect you to barter but they want the highest price possible. They will never sell you anything at a loss. They will always make money on everything they sell or they will not sell it. If they make a sale and they are still smiling, you could have gotten it cheaper. If they are mad at you after the sale, you made a good deal and they did not make as much as they could. Tiffany made two vendors mad at her in one day. Here is Tiffany after about a half hour deal to buy a Kate Spade (New York) bag at the Silk Market. When she got back to the hotel, she found that two of the zippers did not work. She immediately went back and exchanged it for another. The sale's lady was very nice and all the other people around were going goo-goo over Dede and several had to hold him. Now you see that every one is smiling so could Tiffany have gotten the bag for even less?

Here are a couple more shots from the Silk Street Market which was about three blocks from the Hotel, and across the street from McDonald's.

On the way to The Great Wall at Mutianyo, you had to walk the Vendor gauntlet. They expect you to buy a year's worth of "everything" on the way up to the Wall and carry it around with you. Not logical. They had everything from art work, T-shirts, post cards, toys, hats, etc.

The lady in the black coat in the middle tried to sell us all kinds of stuff and we told her that we would not get anything on the way up to the Wall but on the return. She said

, "I will remember you." On our way down about 2.5 hours later, she was about the only one left open at the "vendor gauntlet". Everyone else had gone home for the Chinese New Years Holiday. We visited the wall the day before New Years Eve. Kyle and Tiffany had purchased tickets to take the Alpine Slide down from the wall while Judy and I took the kids with us down the cable car. But when they got there, all the operators had gone home early and they had to walk down. . It took an hour of arguing with the ticket sellers and a couple cell phone calls from our driver to get their money back but they got it.

This is at Tianjin's Ancient Culture Street market. If they sell it, you can find it here. We really loaded up on our gifts here and made excellent deals. My most expensive purchase was a large piece of artwork. From a distance, it looks like a painted piece but when you get close you find out that it is all thread. Somebody spent a lot of time sewing it. Now if I can find a piece of glass that big.

There were a couple of guys that made these dragons, scorpions and birds, among other things, out of green reeds. pretty amazing. They just braid them together.

The market was all decorated for New Years.

There were a lot of balloons for sale and we did get one for Ellie. That is another story.

This is the box of 49 ariel fireworks that I bought to scare away the evil spirits. I bout two boxes of them.

Ellie was looking as some of our stash for the day.

This is my favorite fireworks place. We made several stops there.

This is at the Pearl Market where we spent over an hour bartering on pearl necklaces. There were bags and bags of them, all colors and quality.

This is a small bag of pearls. If you look close, you will notice that it costs 14,000 Yuan or $2000.

Both Judy and I got new "very expensive" watches. Judy's is a Rolex and mine is an Omega. Both have interesting stories. Tiffany and I were shopping at the Silk Market and on our way out, we ran into a street vendor who was trying to sell me everything from Olympic stocking hats, gloves, socks, Olympic key chains. When the Rolex came out, Tiffany bartered the price down to what she wanted to pay. There was another vendor standing two feet away and when the sale was over the second guy pulls out the same watch and says, "You want to buy a watch?" We started laughing because it was the same identical watch. Tiff just says," I just bought that watch. Why should I buy another one?" "I will give you a better price" So Tiffany thought that she could use a spare since the one she got several weeks earlier only lasted three days. She got the second one for half of what she just paid the first vendor. She gave it to Judy.

Kyle helped me barter the price down for mind. I had my price. and the bartering started ten times higher than the ending price. They would throw out a price and it was too high. We walk away and they holler out another price. This goes on several times. They say, "I really want to sell you this watch." And I say back, "I really want to buy this watch." I keep telling them my price and finally they matched it. She is still smiling so was I ripped off?