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!

40 Hours in Inner Mongolia (Part San)

When we got up on Thursday morning we had our last wonderfully tasty breakfast before heading out to do some shopping. Tana got some dried meat and beautiful Mongolian earrings before we both found the candy aisle. I managed to control myself and only bought 2 bags -- I had to get more than one kind to try and share around!

We headed back to have an early lunch of fennel and spinach soup and then Tana had a nap while I read for a little while. After she got up, her mom decided that the dumplings we had had for lunch and dinner weren’t good enough so she had to make some of her own for us for dinner. They were amazing! Did I mention that I have never had better meat?

We ate quickly before heading off to the bus station. Then came my next big surprise: A bus with beds! I thought those only existed in Harry Potter! It was actually quite comfortable and practical. We chatted for a good part of the way back and I really felt like I got to know Tana better, which was very nice. About two hours before we arrived in Huairou, the bus stopped outside a restaurant so that everyone could get out and have dinner. We weren’t particularly hungry so we just sat outside on the curb. Some girls came over to ask if they could take a picture and they were quite surprised when they found out Tana spoke Chinese... On the other hand, a guest at the restaurant told me my English was quite good the other day :p

We made it back to Beigou at around 12 (about 7.5 hours after we left) and headed straight to bed.

New recent words: North, South, East, West, keys, kitchen, fried bread, noodles

I have also started Teaching Tana French :)