Mister you must be joking - you going to make me cry.

You want me to pay how much? You must be joking, that’s about an hour’s pay. I’ll give you a quarter of that. No? Ok, then I don’t want it. What’s that? You’ll halve your original asking price? Not good enough. Halve it again. No? Then I don’t want it. (Picture me feigning to walk away) Oh so you’ll give it to me for that price but you’re not happy. Ok, thank you. Excuse me? Oh, you want to give me a business card so I can send my friends here. Damn it! I paid too much.

If you enjoy shopping then China is not the place for you. Shopping for me conjures up images of strolling along well polished linoleum and browsing through shop after shop of overpriced merchandise that some TV commercial told me I needed, but I actually have no intention of purchasing. That type of shopping nirvana does not exist in Beijing. If you go shopping there, then you are going to buy, and you are going to work your butt off before leaving any shop with a bag in your hand.

There are two major shopping markets set up for tourists, Yashow Market and the Silk market. These cater for the western tourist both in products on offer, and in the price as well. There’s nothing like the feeling of getting a bargain, but having absolutely no confidence in the product that you have just purchased. Jenene and I are not barterers at all, we generally just pay whatever the price is, but here we discovered some inner bargaining beast that must have been dwelling inside us all along. We were lucky enough to have had some inside information from our friend Michelle, who told us that we should always offer a quarter of their original price. So this is what we did and we walked away with some pretty good buys.

I bought a 1GB Sony MP3 player that, to my surprise actually works! Of course some of the song titles appear in Russian, so luckily I just want to listen to the songs, not know what they are called. Friends of ours bought a 2GB iPod each, but theirs doesn’t scroll or shuffle, and every time they turn it on it plays from track 1 again. I think I did the right thing steering away from the products that everybody wants. Don’t get me wrong, we made some stuff ups. Harper and I saw this really cool magnetic spinning top that when you spin on the plastic you can actually lift it up, remove the plastic and then the opposing magnetic poles make it stay in place, hovering and spinning. Very cool! His original price was a ridiculous $18, but we got him down to $5, so I snavelled it up. Of course I haven’t been able to replicate what we saw in the shop, so it sits in the cupboard until I can build up a year’s patience to sit down and try to balance it properly. Jenene also picked up three Billabong shirts for $5 each………..that she can’t wear. Bargain!

With the right attitude, a lot of patience, and the ability to smile and laugh at odd situations, shopping in Beijing can be a fun experience. Add in a bit of luck and you just might walk away with a genuine bargain, although the odds of this are about the same as finding a four leaf clover in a bindi patch.