Extreme Shopping in Beijing
The Chinese are a rather shy nation, except when they have cheap colorful things to sell you. Then they forget all inhibitions and approach you fearlessly, even when you are moving at 15 miles an hour!
We were enjoying our rickshaw ride through the Hutong area of old houses in Beijing when the tour guide made us stop and get together to hear a short history of the place. The streets in the Hutong are very narrow and there is hardly any room between the houses. Nevertheless we were immediately surrounded by an army of sellers. They were all equipped with big bags full of everything they thought we might want to buy: bags, bags for the bags, purses, chopsticks…
Saying “no, I don’t want” or “bu yao” didn’t help. We thought we were safe once we got on the rickshaws again and our riders sped away. Suddenly, as if they were hiding them in their huge bags, the sellers got on bicycles and started chasing after us. China definitely makes you feel like a star!
When they caught up with my rickshaw, the Chinese lady pulled out two sets of 10 pairs of chopsticks. “Eighty!” she said. Was she mad? We were moving! She hardly had her hands on the bike! “Lady, lady,” she said again, “fifty!” I looked ahead. The tall brick fences were closing up making the street probably 3 feet wide. The lady disappeared, so I thought she had given up. The moment the fences opened up some more space she appeared again “Twenty, lady, twenty!”
Someone in the group said once that in China you buy even the things you don’t want just because they give a price you can’t refuse. Twenty Yuan for twenty sets of chopsticks was my price. My fear of collision between our rickshaw and the bicycle also contributed to my decision to take the deal. I only had a fifty though. So there we were moving through the narrow street along with the seller on her bike. I gave her my fifty, she gave me the chopsticks and somehow without losing her balance on the bike or anything, reached into her pocket and gave me my change.
It was the most intense purchase I have ever done!
Margarita Antonova