It is 4 am and I am awake!
The Gold Street Market was a ton of fun.
After a brief altercation with a less-than-honest cab driver, we hopped out at the Yixiang Hotel, where Brentan and I cashed some traveler’s checks.
Oddly enough, the exchange rate had gone up from when I’d exchanged my American cash earlier in the morning – something I hadn’t really thought was possible, especially since the yuan is pegged to the US dollar – but on reflection I guess it made sense.
In any case, the service charge for cashing traveler’s checks more than made up for the slight difference in exchange rate.
Then it was off to the market!
We walked through the Lido Hotel (gorgeous!) on our way to a few DVD stores (sketchy!), then walked down the street to the big Gold Street Market.
I picked up a pretty amusing pamphlet outside – “
Sunny Gold Street Happy Life The place make your Chinese dream come to true!” proclaimed the front – then went inside for my first taste of the overwhelming pushiness of Chinese market vendors.
Here, you have to be careful not to show too much interest in an item unless you really want it, because the vendors want your business very, very badly and will not let up on you if they think they can sell you something. Asking the price of something is not, as in the States, a simple inquiry, but rather an invitation to the vendor to begin bidding with you, and once you begin bidding, you continue until you agree on a price, which pretty much means you need to pay the agreed-upon price. All the vendors will try to convince you that they are giving you a great deal – “for you, I give special price!” and various reasons for this are given “…because you are a student, because you have such a pretty face, because your Chinese is so good, etc., etc., etc.” They will try to persuade you that you cannot find a lower price “other vendors charge you $A, I only charge you $B” or the perhaps slightly more honest “other foreigners I charge $X, for you I only charge $Y because you speak Chinese to me” and so on. You just need to be strong and tell them wo bu yao (I don’t want it) and walk away if they are getting too pushy. There is no sense in buying something you don’t want to appease a pushy vendor out of politeness’ sake. Or so I told myself.
Something that the lady at the DVD store said to us as we were bargaining with her really got me, though. At increased pressure from the United States and other countries whose intellectual property rights are violated when the Chinese pirate their DVDs, Chinese police have begun to crack down on the trade in uncopyrighted media materials. Business is not as good as it used to be for DVD vendors, and prices are on the rise. As we tried to bargain the sellers down an extra 10 kuai, the woman we were primarily speaking with said pleadingly, “You have to understand, to you it (the extra 10 kuai) is nothing, but to us it is everything.” And, of course, she is completely right. Our money goes so far here it’s hard to reconcile the desire to save money (or not get ripped off) with the realization that our savings of 10 or 15 kuai is almost nothing in American terms (about a dollar or two) yet mean so much to the Chinese people living here whose standard of living is so much lower and whose purchasing power in Beijing is so small. Of course I know this is not an open invitation to get ripped off, to settle for higher prices because someone appears poor or spins a sob story – the same goes in the United States – but it’s a difficult balance to strike, in moral terms.
Anyway, right now it’s almost 5 am here (and yes, I’m awake… thank you, jet lag) and I’m super-excited because today is the day we move into our HBA dorms! The building opens at 12 for students to get in, and I’ll probably arrive about an hour or so after that. After lunch, Sara, Brentan and I are all heading into Beijing together because Sara wants to show Brentan the Wudaokou market near my university and I, obviously, will be moving in. This isn’t goodbye, though – Sara and I have lots of plans to hang out on the weekends (either in Beijing or at her peaceful apartment, which sounds good to me because the food here is amazing). I am so excited – I can tell already that this is going to be an incredible summer.
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