05-04-09 - Walk about

So me and a few others walked around downtown Shanghai during the day and night and thought I would take a bunch of snappy shots. Here is some eye candy for ya.

I'll have to look up the name of this place, but its a bargaining market, which translates to "lets see how much money we can make off of ignorant white tourists." Hahah. Guilty. Every single shop you pass, you hear "hey good buddy, wanna buy watch, purse, DVD? Good Price. Very special." I politely said "no thanks" to those who asked me to look at there stuff, but when you hear it every 8 seconds, and you do it for 2 hours straight, it gets a little tiring. I eventually broke down and resorted to the "no thanks hand wave."

My first purchase was the Dexter seasons 1-3, which I think I payed 200 RMB for, which is about $25 USD. In retrospect, I probably could have gotten it for around 80 RMB. I started way too high during the initial phase of the bargaining. Here is how bargaining there works:

1.  You give a really low price, like 40 RMB on their calculator they hand you.

2. The seller's eyes go wide as if they had seen a ghost and say something back in chinese. 

3. They take the calculator, and make a terrible offer, like 300 RMB.

4. You're eyes do the same, and you put in the same price in the calculator to show them you know what you're doing.

5. They start to drop there price.

6. This goes back and forth for a little.

7. Eventually, you have to name a price low enough where they dont accept, so you walk away, and then they go after you. And if they dont go after you, you know you went too low, which is a good thing, because you can just go back later and have a basis for about how much you can get it for.

So its a lot of fun bargaining. I'd say start off and practice bargaining on a cheap item until you get the hang of it. I felt like I was ripping them off by trying to bargain really low, but they for sure bested me a few times, so you have to realize you're both going for opposite goals and dont feel bad about trying to get a good price.


This is us eating towards the end of the day before we split off, with some going home, others staying. From the left to the right, we have Darren, Verionica, Ian (my room mate), Andrew, Wentin, Tony, Mary, and then Gerald is somewhere.
Darren, Tony and I split off from the group after dinner to do more sight seeing at night.