Sipping rosemary tea (a slightly curious flavor though I am a huge fan of rosemary) while I work at a cafe.
Bargaining Fun!
I’m getting a bit better at bargaining, it seems, having made some great deals yesterday. However, I still get a bit stupid when I really want something.
I was supposed to be looking for gifts and maybe a pair of sandals for myself, at most, though I ended up with quite a few things for me. I bought:
- 1 pair of “Toms” shoes: starting price 260RMB, I knocked it down to 120. I initially thought I’d made a very poor deal because I heard people getting sneakers all over the place for something like 40-50, though one of my roommates said her friends had only ever managed to talk it down to 110 at the cheapest so maybe not!
- A set of “Adidas” workout clothes, shorts and a tank: starting price 550RMB or so, knocked it down to 120. That’s the best price cut, percentage-wise, that I might get my whole time here. I’m actually not that impressed with getting the pieces for basically 60 each since I only ever buy workout clothes at TJMaxx anyway, and this is only about 50-60% savings from those prices. Also, Uniqlo has massive overstock on some moisture-wicking athletic Ts and has them on clearance sell for 35, so maybe its not that impressive.
- A pretty nice man’s polo shirt: started at 160 RMB, and I got it at 70. I don’t think that one was too great, but its my best t-shirt/polo type item price so far because I haven’t been doing well with those.
Those were my reasonably good deals yesterday, and I made some not overly great ones:
- A leather card pouch/coin purse, “Marc by Marc Jacobs” that started at 260 RMB, which I got for 120. I think I should have maxed out at 100 for this, though the leather is a bit above most of the small leather goods at Silk Market. I’m going to try again with this item and see if I can get 5 or 6 for present-giving at something like 80-90 RMB.
- A “Balenciaga” wallet that started at 650 RMB, which I got for 470. This was probably my poorest deal in Beijing so far. I know the actual lowest price for this is above 200, and maybe a bit above 300 as well because I was bargaining pretty hard at the first stall, insisting on 160-170 after about two-three price suggestion back-and-forths (she says 580 ish to which I say too high and slowly raise my price from 100 to 140, etc.), which is two or three more back and forths around the time where I might pretend to walk away and she calles me back with 300 some and I try to get 200 some… except she walked away which meant that rough range could well have been too low. So all in all I didn’t have a good sense of the price and hadn’t seen such a wallet at that many places, so I wanted it a bit too much. I really think the actual lowest price doesn’t break 400, maybe an upper 300? Making this a poor deal.
Alas, I Cannot Bargain
I’ve gone to Yashow Clothing Market in Sanlitun twice in the last week to practice my bargaining skills and scope out the available handbags - the smaller-ticket items such as little leather pouches and the polyester-y quilted and printed Marc by Marc totes were not impressive - but I’ve proven to be an almost unconscionably horrendous haggler.
Here’s what I’ve bought, and the prices:
On trip 1, I bought:
1 tshirt: 80 RMB
1 cotton scarf: 35 RMB
2 sets of about a dozen postcards each, so about 24 postcards: 45 RMB
On trip 2, I bought:
2 tshirts: 90 RMB each
1 thin, light knit cardigan: 100 RMB
There’s no way I should have accepted paying anything more than 60 RMB on the t-shirts, and I probably could have had the sweater for 80 or 90. The scarf I know I should have gotten for 20 or 25. I totally know what I should be paying, except I always end up paying Uniqlo-esque retail prices, which is a poor deal at a local market.
Blargh
Throughout my time in Beijing, I’ve had lunch twice with several weeks between each opportunity at fairly upscale places in the Sanlitun area, which is itself rather upscale. Both times, a small fly (really small, about the size of a large speck of dust) promptly came and landed on my salad, becoming embalmed in the dressing.
Gross.
And I think that means someone upstairs is telling me I shouldn’t be spending my money on upscale restaurants anyway.
Political Correctness
Sooooo… I elected to write about my Xinjiang research (both the pre-junior-year summer work in the History Department and my own senior thesis) for my speech and ended up with a piece so long (nearly 3000 characters) that I will now be giving my speech in a thirty minute time slot (encompassing Q&A time) rather than a ten minute one. All this will take place in Chinese. Egads.
While my listening comprehension has already proven to be quite good and my reading comprehension is going up, my class participation and speaking tends to be limited to reciting from the book or making fairly simple sentences to demonstrate that I know the vocabulary and my writing skills in Chinese were… previously nonexistent. So all of this is a challenge, to say the least.
I have finished my speech script/essay in slightly colloquial speech-friendly form.
I should mention that I tend to avoid politically sensitive wording and arguments as much as possible (one who reads the relevant academic writings will find that most of the scholars, particularly the historians, though even the political scientists to a limited extent do the same, to the point where some might criticize them for being too “pro-China”… all the same, a Wellesley professor did mention that most of the authors in S. Frederick Starr’s compilation of academic papers on Xinjiang were subsequently barred from returning there). That being said I did make a few brief criticisms of the current set of policies the CCP applies to Xinjiang.
Though I should also mention that several paragraphs of my speech are essentially devoted to disclaimers on how I do not take biased Western sources at face value, how I am unable to familiarize myself with academic work in Chinese which might allow one to draw completely different conclusions from mine, how my study did not venture to assign blame for any violent incidents, etc. etc.
Strictly Speaking
… My speech topic (a very general discussion of Xinjiang’s history from the perspective of my undergraduate research) is beyond my Chinese abilities. Sigh. Must challenge myself to attempt to write and memorize it anyway without doing too much of a disservice to my knowledge and supervisors!
Yikes
Reading some comments from Wellesley alums who have recently taken the bar on our closed Facebook group. It sounds absurdly stressful. (It is a long time before my own bar exam will ever possibly be, but egads!)
Lacking Regular Internet Access has Been Good for Me
I’ve read so many books in the last few weeks, including most of Guy Gavriel Kay’s historically-based fantasy novels.
The Lions of Al-Rassan and the Sarantine Mosaic books are just so good. I also adore Under Heaven for what is one of very few portrayals of ancient China that has a very deep, genuine feel.
Not Getting to Watch Deathly Hallows pt. 2 Anytime Soon
So the PRC government is preventing any more western movies from being released until (apparently) The Founding of the Party movie that was just released to coincide with the 90th Anniversary of the CCP makes a certain amount of money. That means that the new Harry Potter movie likely will not appear in theaters until I’m close to being or already back in Hong Kong.
I can’t believe that I won’t be able to watch the movie for nearly a month! Disastrous.
Good Idea, Bad Idea
I might or might not be too willing to eat raw vegetables here in China (I order salads more often than I order any other single item). I suppose I’ll know for sure if I come down with something unpleasant, but that has yet to happen.
