Bei­jing

Visit Great Wall,
Eat Bei­jing Duck
Shop Silk Market

Even my plas­tic shop­ping bag encour­ages me to shop till I drop. This is pretty much the new com­mu­nist motto of China, after “let a hun­dred flow­ers bloom: let a hun­dred schools of thought con­tend” (百花齐放，百家争鸣), “polit­i­cal power grows out of the bar­rel of a gun” (枪杆子里面出政权) and “the rev­o­lu­tion­ary war is a war of the masses” (革命战争是群众的战争) .

You can shop for pretty much any­thing in China nowa­days, from cheap Cul­tural Rev­o­lu­tion mem­o­ra­bil­ias to expen­sive imported beauty prod­ucts, from silk embroi­dered clothes to ivory chop­stick. But there is one place West­ern­ers are very fond of: the Silk Mar­ket, aka Silk Street (秀水街）.

A few years ago, the Silk Mar­ket was an open-air mar­ket located nearby the Amer­i­can embassy, on Xiushui Dongjie. The shop­ping alley con­sisted of 410 stalls sell­ing mostly knock-off lux­ury name brand gar­ments and tourist souvenirs.This was the place to buy a Nike tee-shirt, Adi­das shoes, Levis jeans, Gior­gio Armani watches, Ray Ban sun­glasses, Vuit­ton hang­bags etc. Although absolutely ille­gal because they were coun­ter­feit, the clothes were very pop­u­lar because they were cut on the large side, suit­ing fat West­ern­ers like us much bet­ter. Because the mar­ket pri­mar­ily tar­geted West­ern­ers, bar­gain­ing and hag­gling was not only rec­om­mended but essen­tial if you didn’t want to pay $30 for a Mao lighter.

The Silk Mar­ket still exists, but like a lot of place before the Bei­jing Olympic, it was upgraded and it re-opened in 2005. Mis­sion accom­plished: the mar­ket is now in a 35,000 square meter com­plex houses, spread over seven floors with three lev­els of base­ments. Each floor is ded­i­cated to a dif­fer­ent type of goods: from the base­ment to the top: suit­cases and hand­bags, clothes, teeshirts, kids clothes, jew­el­ery, watches, sun glasses, cal­lig­ra­phy and other Chi­nese sou­venirs. Sure, ven­dors have being sued for trade­mark infringe­ment but hell, coun­ter­feit goods are still here.

Once you enter the under­ground Silk Mar­ket at the Yon­ganli sub­way sta­tion, some 1,700 retail ven­dors and over 3,000 sales­peo­ple are wait­ing for you, the 白鬼子 (our nick­name, the “white ghosts”). And as we walk through the nar­row alleys, we are nicely asked to part with our Yuan:

— Look, look, you want teeshirts, lady, teeshirts, you need teeshirts!
— Under­wear, you want under­wear, you do!

I quickly glanced at my reflec­tion in the mir­ror: did I for­get to wear a bra today? Appar­ently no. And I also had a teeshirt on me. I did not need under­wear nor this par­tic­u­lar teeshirt.

But it was already too late. I had made eye con­tact with a red Gucci teeshirt. The sales­per­son, a young woman, grabbed my arm:

— Which one? I give you good price!

Trapped. I did not want a teeshirt. And I was also see­ing the under­wear woman in the cor­ner of my eye, about to grab me as well. I moved away while both of them turned around for a sec­ond to take their giant cal­cu­la­tors (bar­gain­ing is always done with a cal­cu­la­tor for two rea­sons: the lan­guage bar­rier and mostly to make sure no one else hears the “very spe­cial price” you are given). I had been inside the Silk Mar­ket for less than five min­utes and I already wanted to get out.

Most ven­dors knew Eng­lish. Their vocab­u­lary included sen­tences such as: “super qual­ity”, “color is well with your shape” and “this is real (insert brand name here)”, which they yelled loudly to each for­eign walk­ing by their stall. Headache.

I hate to be rude but I didn’t want to chit chat with sales­per­sons who grabbed my arm or my hand, ran after me or tried to shove their mer­chan­dises into my face. Yet, I wanted to buy a cou­ple of stuff.

I sat on a bench (the one and only bench avail­able in the whole com­plex) and tried to think of a strat­egy. My prob­lem was, I wanted a cou­ple of teeshirts but I wanted: 1) to check the qual­ity closely 2) larger-than-Chinese-size stuffs 3) a good bar­gain. But every time I made eye con­tact with some clothes, men­tally judg­ing their size, pushy Chi­nese women started bar­gain­ing. I didn’t want to bar­gain before I was sure I wanted what­ever I was look­ing at. Yet I couldn’t look at any goods with­out being asked to buy. Vicious cir­cle.

I finally found a stall where the one and only sales­per­son was busy with other cus­tomers. I took one of the teeshirt dis­played. I liked the style, the color and the size looked fine. Let’s rumble!

— How much?
— I give you very spe­cial price.
— How much?
— This is real Louis Vuitton.

(No point in point­ing out that, last time I checked, Louis Vuit­ton didn’t do teeshirts)

— How much?
— 1,000 RMB.

Yeah, right. As if. That’s about US$150. I was laugh­ing out loud.

— This is real. Friend price. You speak Chi­nese, I give you good price. 800 RMB. Final price. You tell me a fair price.

I quickly typed “30” on the calculator.

— No no no, no good. Final final price 500RMB.

It took another 20 min­utes of nego­ti­a­tion before I got the teeshirt for 60RMB (about US$8). I was fairly happy with that and started walk­ing away… till the girl in the next stall grabbed my arm:

— Now you buy one more! Which color?

I did not buy one more (quickly walked away) and moved on to the other side of the mar­ket. I was offered silk scarves (“how much you pay?”), pens (“very good and very real”), jack­ets (“cold, you need jacket!” — it was about 45C out­side but never mind) and more under­wear (“very cheap for you”). I was hum­ming “no, no, no” like a mantra. Mak­ing eye con­tact was their cue to attack. Look­ing even remotely inter­ested could result in the sales­per­son announc­ing his “spe­cial no joke price” and grab­bing what­ever part of your body you had available.

“One world, one good deal” the sign said at the entrance of the Silk Mar­ket. Hope I got a few, cause this was an Olympic sport! I gave up on exhaus­tion a cou­ple of hours later and 200RMB lighter. The Silk Mar­ket is def­i­nitely an expe­ri­ence — but not nec­es­sar­ily a nice one — of bar­gain­ing. Here, the girls are more likely to use cheap tricks like short­change you, being aggres­sive and pushy, plus the qual­ity of most items isn’t great. In most of the other mar­kets, you will bar­gain for fun and the atmos­phere will be much less oppress­ing. You want teeshirts now? I give you a good price… friend.

Related arti­cles:

1. Mar­ket Day in Chichicastenango
2. Wang­fu­jing (王府井）
3. It’s A Mall World
4. Playa Del Carmen
5. Qian­men (前门)