Wednesday, July 30, 3014
Wednesday was a more leisurely day in a our travels. We spent the first half of the day at an English bookstore called the Bookworm. It is a cafe that serves coffee, tea, smoothies, and Western food. One of the dining rooms has walls lined with bookshelves full of used books, both fiction and non-fiction, that you can read during your visit. Another dining area has bookshelves with books you can purchase. Carissa and I spent the morning and part of the afternoon sitting at a window table, sipping smoothies and coffee, eating an appetizer or two, and reading (for those book lovers out there who are interested, I was reading The Fellowship of the Ring and Carissa was reading The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett). It was lovely. Also, the menus were designed to look like a book. There was even a table of contents. I was delighted. 🙂
As we walked away from the Bookworm, we found a book-lending vending machine. Brilliant!
Hey y’all, Carissa here. After the bookworm, we visited the Panjiayuan market. Basically, it’s a huge, outdoor flea market. Some vendors have stalls under the large awning; some have a marked-out plot; many have a blanket spread out on the ground with their wares spread out. The vendors in stalls sell something specific – beads in every color, glass, boxes, polished walnut jewelry. The other vendors have anything they can cram onto their blanket spread out to catch tourist’s eye and convince them something is a great find and must-have souvenir.
Being a tourist, something did catch my eye, and the hawker was quite eager to convince me that I needed it. He pointed out every detail that made this chess set special, irreplaceable. Finally, he put in a price on the calculator.
Now, we had been warned to NEVER pay the first price. In fact, in this particular market, we’d been told to begin by offering perhaps 10% of the asked of price.
So I did.
This sparked a long, animated bargaining process. Now, I don’t speak any Chinese beyond “Thank you” or “hello.” He didn’t speak anything beyond “okay.” Somehow, it didn’t stop either of us. I put in a low price, and he threw a fit and slightly lowered his price. I did it again, and he exclaimed to the other vendors, making a scene and basically accusing me of driving his family, children, and grandparents to starvation. And I did it again. A small crowd gathered where I sat on the man’s tiny stool (which he chivalrously offered while he squatted) and went back-and-forth. For all his production, I could tell he was enjoying this. And so was I. So eventually, I got a good price on my chess set, AND I got a pocket watch I had expressed interest in for a lower price than I had originally offered. As I walked away and the crowd started to disperse, I saw the Chinese men nod to each other, gesture to me, and give a thumbs-up. I choose to believe that they were impressed and that I got a good price :).
Finally, on our way back we stopped by the Walfugjing food street. It was recommended in the tour guides. We found it to be ridiculously crowded, overpriced, and dirty. The draw is definitely the interesting foods you can try.
By interesting, I refer to the scorpions, starfish, seahorses, etc. No, this is not standard Chinese fare. It’s a tourist draw.
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