Postcards from China

I had intended to go to Beijing during this extended visit to China, but a few days before we were to go, both my daughters got sick. Quite sick. One to the point that we had to take her to the hospital, where the doctor she saw recommended getting her on an I.V. rehydration plan for three days. Nyet, we decided on that, so I stayed “home” in Anhai to nurse the girls back to health (they’re fine now, by the way) while my Wife and her Younger Sister instead made the trip to Beijing. If I had been along, the following story probably woudn’t have been possible.

It’s no secret that “foreigners” often get “overcharged” when souvenier-shopping in China, but how to know how much one is getting overcharged?

Well, thanks to my (native Chinese) Wife’s astute undercover reporting recent shopping spree in Beijing, I have some some anecdotes and numbers to report.

The first small snippet: while bargaining with one seller for an even lower price on an item, the seller used the following statement as part of her bargaining technique: “You apparently don’t trust me. I’m offering you a great price already. Why should I go lower when I could sell this same thing to the next foreigner who comes in here for ten times what I’m asking from you.”

Whoa. We might guess that “ten times” could be an exaggeration, part of her haggling technique, but still. Whoa.

But then during another leg of this shopping spree, my Wife and her Younger Sister visited what we’ll call a “Jade Emporium.” It includes a sales showroom, an artisan workshop, and a “training center” to train other Chinese in the art of jade carving. I have names and addresses, but they’re really not important to this story, since what I’m about to describe isn’t an isolated phenomenon. It’s just the best of several examples I have….

Here, as told to me by my Wife, is her experience at this “Emporium.”

This Jade Emporium is included as a stop on a number of tour group itineraries. Visitors get off their buses, check out the showroom, maybe see a demonstration of some sort if they’re lucky, and–the whole point of being taken there in the first place–buy lots of jade stuff (if the tour operators are lucky, that is, since they get a commission on all purchases).

My Wife and her Younger Sister were asked by one of the shop girls where they were from, and they replied “Fujian Province,” and the girl said, “Oh, our general manager is from Fujian Province. Let me go get him…”.

A bit later, said general manager arrived, dressed in his best spiffies, and greeted his fellow Fujianese in a way that didn’t exactly make them feel he was their long lost cousin–too much stereotypical “used car salesman” stuff.

Anyway, to the point–and if you plan on shopping in Beijing (or anywhere in China) around the 2008 Olympics, pay attention. This post’s for you–they got around to talking prices with this fellow on a piece that had a price tag for 6000 RMB attached to it. My wife said she was interested in the piece, but 6000 RMB seemed high.

And again, if you think you might be inclinced to pay sticker price on some nice looking thing just because “You like it,” or because “Well, it’s worth that to me,” then perk up!

He just gave a little smile, picked up the piece, and whispered to them, “Follow me.”

He took them away to an area where the rest of the tour group–other travelers from all over China–couldn’t hear them talk, and told them something like this:

“Look, of course 6000 RMB is too high for this, that’s just fishing for big dumb fish with a small worm. We get a lot of tourists here from Japan and Korea, and we’ll let them haggle the price down 50% on this sort of piece, to 3000 RMB. They think they’re getting a great half-price deal, but even that is ‘killing them down to the last drop of blood’. How much do you think this piece costs me? No idea? Would you pay 2000RMB for it? Would you feel that’s a good deal? Look, because we’re from the same province, I’m going to level with you. You can take it at just over my cost. For 350 RMB, it’s yours. But I want you to do three things for me: First, live a good life. Second, don’t hesitate to share this jade piece with others [Note: He had also explained the “curative powers of jade” to them.]; and third, tell anyone back in Fujian Province that if they’re looking to learn the jade craft to come up here. We can give them the training they need.”

He also explained that this sort of pricing–for example, putting a sticker price equal to $750 US for a piece that cost the seller less than $40.00–is going to be the norm for sellers around Beijing during the 2008 Olympic period, and many sellers are already warming up with tour groups, which are typically more “captive” buyers.

Phenomenal.

And me, I feel torn between (1) trying to warn tourists going to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics and (2) opening a shop in Beijing to sell Chinese arts and crafts to tourists coming to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

Another “follow-up” post, this time to the tale of our visit to Anhai’s Wu Li Qiao, or Five Mile Bridge.

I went back not long ago with my Mother-In-Law and two daughters, and this time we walked further down the bridge than I’ve ever gone before–perhaps 3/4 of the length and back. This time I learned a bit more about the bridge from my Mother-In-Law, such as:

• Half the bridge is in the jurisdiction (and under the care of) Jinjiang County (i.e. the Anhai side), the other half by another county, Nan’an County. The structure of these two halves is different. The Jinjiang/Anhai side has six stones across the breadth of the bridge. The other half has seven.
• The supports on the Nan’an side are boat-shaped, as seen in this picture. On the Jinjiang side, they’re square.
• In the 50’s and 60’s, water around the bridge was clean enough to swim in. Now it looks like it could melt steel.
• Last year, people stole a pair of statues (pictures below) from the mid-point temple during the night, with several people required to carry each one away to a waiting boat, with the ultimate plan of smuggling them to a buyer outside the country. The “kidnappers” were captured before making the shipment out of the country, though, and the statues returned, however. (This wasn’t the first kidnap attempt, just the first time they actually got them away from the temple. On an attempt some years back, the thieves dislodged the statues, but apparently didn’t bring enough helpers to carry them. Darned heavy mo-fo’s, I’ll wager.)

Some photos from our outing:

My Mother-In-Law and 4-Year-Old Daughter in front of the Anhai-side bridge gate:

My two daughters in front of the mid-bridge temple altar:

The mid-bridge temple ceiling:

Detail of a stone inscription on the mid-bridge temple wall:

Stone inscription at the mid-bridge temple:

The view out the front door of the mid-bridge temple
(Those are the stolen-but-rescued statues dressed in red):

Halfway between the mid-bridge temple and the Nan’an end of the bridge, you’ll find this small kiosk-sized temple. The old man inside is telling one girl’s fortune while her friend waits to the right.

This is a cheap, lowbrow post, and I’ll admit it right up front.

During our recent visit to Xiamen, I had in the back of my mind the notion to write a post about how people seem, as compared to my previous visits to China, to be shouting “Lao Wai” and staring at foreigners much less and so on. And generally, in Xiamen and Quanzhou and Jinjiang and Anhai, I’ve found this to be true. It happens, but far less than before (”before” = 1993-94, 1996, 1997, 2000).

I was even thinking of a punch line for a post of, “I guess all those ‘Please Do Not Stare at the Foreigner’ t-shirts are starting to pay off.”

But then we visited Gulang Island, just a short ferry ride away from Xiamen, and it was like a step back in time to when entire traffic flows would grind to a halt to stare at a foreigner.

For some reason, the “locals” over on Gulang Island (gulang yu) haven’t caught up with their Xiamen neighbors in becoming disinterested in staring and shouting “Hello!” at foreigners and all that, but even more so, the tourists coming from other parts of China to visit Gulang Island are still stuck in that “earlier phase of social development.”

This is my revenge post.

We were walking along the “boardwalk” after getting off the ferry to Gulang Island, and this old woman, who we could tell by dress and mannerisms wasn’t from “around here,” sauntered up to us, as we stopped for my Wife to tie one of my daughters’ shoelaces, inserted herself without a word right into our midst, and stared at our girls like she was disapprovingly examining some sort of abnormal fleshy growth.

In the first of the revenge photos that follow, you see her doing the close-range staring thing, while her husband, some distance away in the background, has spotted the situation. In the second photo, he’s at her side after telling her, “Let’s go; the foreigner is taking your picture.”

Even as he lead her away, she looked back to stare at our girls with that same Bill Murray/Steve Martin/Saturday Night Live sketch “What the hell IS that thing?” expression on her face.

We’ve gotten used to people “spotting” us and “looking” at us, but most who approach us have drummed up some conversation, maybe said our daughters are pretty, or asked if they speak Chinese, or something.

But not this woman–she spoke not a word, but went straight to her work–it was quite a throwback to the days of feeling like “Foreigner = Circus Freak.”

OK, enough venting. Here she is: