Thoughts on Bargaining and How I Only Sort of Failed at It Today

I haven't spent a night in Beijing in a while, so I thought I would tonight and check out one of the hostels my mom, Marie-Eve and I are staying at next week. It seems decently nice for what we are paying (a little over $10).

Nothing particularily interesting has happenned today so I will share my thoughts on bargaining instead.

In my opinion, there are two methods. The first involves knowing the price something should be and aiming for that price. This takes lots of practice and you still may be unhappy with what you get if you think the typical price is unreasonable. On the other hand, you won't walk into a different store later and find out you wouldn't have got whatever you are buying for cheaper.


The second method, and my prefered one, involves not caring what something is worth, but instead considering how much you want it. You may end up paying way too much for something, but you will always be happy with what you paid and you don't have to spend lots of time checking out different stalls/stores to find out what the typical asking price is. This technique works especially well for getting things you really don't want for cheap -- so be careful!

Numerous times I have walked away from something with what seems like a reasonably typical price because I really didn't want it, only to have the price drop by half.

On the other hand, I walked by a store and found a dress I fell in love with today (this from someone who hates dresses). I asked about the price and it was way too high. I offered a bit less than half and the lady shook her head so I walked away -- only to turn around a few minutes later and walk back because I really wanted the dress. Now in the world of bargaining, going back is the worst thing you can do because it tells the vendor you really do want what they are selling. I cut a little off what she originally offered, but still paid about twice what I wanted. Oh well! At least it represented what the dress was worth for me :)

On a different note, I'm back to being the only intern as William suddenly got on a plane and went back to Spain without an explanation the other day.

On another different note, I had a great conversation about tomatoes yesterday. We had tomatoes and egg for dinner so I was asking Li Dan (the cashier from the glass shop) how you say tomatoes in Chinese. Our conversation went a bit like this:

"How do you say tomato?"
"What's a tomato?"
"The red vegetable we had for dinner. Or, well, I guess it's a fruit, but you know what I mean..."
"Hunh?"
"You know...the red thing..."
"Oh, a tomAHto"
"hahahahaha"

Then I had to explain the "tomAYto, TomAHto" expression. It was great!