Day 35

Today I met Geoff’s old research assistant, Lee, as he wanted to say bye before he left for the States. Lee is going to graduate school at Penn State. We went to the silk market again to buy him some shirts before I left and to return a cord that I had bought that did not work. When I tried to return it I had to argue and barging to get my full price back. It was quite frustrating especially since I had just bought it the day before and they remembered selling it to me. I eventually prevailed and was refunded the full amount. Then it was off to buy some shirts for Lee. My previous statements about Chinese being so helpful and generally nice to you have changed some in the last few weeks. I know realize they are nice to me but as several Chinese have told me is that they generally dislike each other. The cast system is definitely in full swing here and they often see themselves better than those cooking the food, or cleaning the rooms. This is often evident when I ask a student to ask the cook how his day or weekend was they are very hard to persuade into doing so.  However, I think part of this dislike is because of how they generally treat each other. I especially saw this when dealing with the sales people when buying the shirts. They were much more willing to deal with Geoff or me, as we were always smiling and not critical. In addition, we always came away with a better price. A funny thing happened when I was dealing on an item I was trying to buy I gave my price and she was determined not to sell it to me for that so I walked away. She called me back 5 times and finally sold it to me. I was walking around with the item and another dealer asked me what I paid for it. He said he would buy it for me for 10 RMB more. I know the people I bought it from still made money but they obviously were close to even with it and often sold them for much more. (I guess I am a good Dutchman). I have often found that you can get it for nearly 10% of the first price they give you. They will start with an outrageous price but immediately knock off 10 or 20 percent to start as “the special price for you!” Then the bargaining is on! I enjoy it but it would get old after a while. I was drug into several clothing shops to look and ended up bargaining and a few I would have to physically force my way out because they were so determined to sell me something I had never wanted. I don’t ever buy from these shops. There are so many shops that you always find some happy polite person to deal with.

They also sell many handcrafts here, which are pretty amazing to watch. The glass jars are painted from the inside and the river and waterfall paintings are made by only using parts of his hands. He often used the fingernail, the side of his palm or his knuckle. These were quite spendy and they would not budge much below a certain level. Usually you would leave and come back they would drop it slightly but we tried this a few times with the pictures and they stayed solid.