Crazy Flash Card Lady
One of the dangers of going to the more popular areas of Shanghai is dealing with the shopkeepers. They are constantly on the lookout for tourists to fleece. You can note them by their calls: “Lookah lookah!” “Just looking!” “You want this?” And that’s just when you walk by–if you show any interest in their wares, they will bolt up out of their chairs and start in on a spiel. And god help you if you actually ask about something–you will have to beat them off with a stick, almost literally.
I had this happen before when I first came to Shanghai, and forgot my lesson. Today, I looked at Compact Flash memory cards for cameras in a shop, and in a moment of weakness, asked about the 4GB Extreme version by SanDisk. 680 yuan (about $100) was the listed price. I wasn’t actually trying to talk the lady down, I was just trying to calculate the amount in my head and recall what the price was in the U.S. She took my reluctance for a bargaining tactic, and brought her price down to 350 Yuan, or about $50. I told her it was an interesting offer, as I knew that such cards were probably in that range in the U.S. But I don’t like being pressured, and so I told her that I would think about it and maybe come back to buy it.
Not good enough. “What you mean, ‘think about it’?” she asked as if I’d slapped her. “No think, this good deal, I really want to do business with you!” She then lowered her price to $35 after demanding me to type the price I wanted into her calculator. Sachi tried to get her off my back by translating my explanation that I don’t buy things right away, I always think first. This seemed to offend her. Acting angry and hurt, she followed me as I walked away, lowering her price to $20 and then $10, repeating “I really want to do business with you!” I had to walk into another store just to get her to lay off of me. By this time it felt like she was not interested even in making money (the U.S. version costs $30) but if I agreed to take the flash card then she could grab ahold of me and duplicate me with a pod person and then suck my brains out or something. Seriously, I was afraid the card was a defective throwaway or stolen merchandise or something.
They really are that aggressive. Sachi commented on my getup, my digital SLR hung around m,y neck and wearing this big backpack, I just shouted “tourist.” When we walked down busy streets, people would flock to me, saying “Rolex,” “watch,” “bag!” and “antiques!” sometimes holding out catalog sheets full of pictures of watches. Often these people were inside stores they clearly were not employed by. One time a guy tried to hawk special exchange rates to us in a bank. Several people begged for money.
Quite a city to take a stroll in.
Are these real ones in the store pictured above? Or some street hawker who got a big loan and a solid set of brass ones? I would not put it past some of these guys.
Your reluctance IS a bargaining tactic in China! 😉 I know you didn’t mean it to be one, but it’s common- I saw a lot of that when I traveled there with my friend Lijun, who is an absolute marvel to behold when she’s negotiating.
Or so it seems to an American’s eye. She would act reluctant, even when I knew she wanted to buy an item. She would get “angry” and stomp her feet, yell, throw her hands in the air, and generally act in ways that shocked my innocent meiguo eyes.
And then she and the shopkeeper would agree on something, and start chit-chatting as though they were old friends, happy as could be.
Odds are that if you’d have taken her up on the 10 buck offer, then she would have started working on getting you to pay more. They’ll do that all the time with foreigners, particularly Americans.
The Chinese have taken to capitalism in a pretty vigorous manner.
I don’t know how long your China trip is, but there *is* a Mandarin phrase/word that might help:
Boo-yao. Say it like you mean it, which you probably do, because it means “I don’t want that (insert cheap tourist tickytacky crap here) you are trying to sell me!”
“Booyao! Booyao!” If you learn to get it just right, it’s incredible. I used it at Tianamen Square and the postcard/book/flag/whatever hawkers would immediately veer right off away from me. I think they assume that if you get the pronunciation just right, you must be local- or at least local enough that you know better than to buy their crap.
About the watches- there are generally two categories of replica watches in the world today. The first type are utter crap. They’re the ones that sometimes misspell the brand name, or the hands fall off if you shake the watch, or they start running backwards (usually just after you’ve left the city you bought it in) or, most likely, quit running at all.
The second type are sometimes good- and sometimes are REALLY good. They’re made with the fully automatic movements that are more or less exact replicas of the original Swiss movements. Everything about them is done just like the real thing… except they’re made in China by a company that’s just doing a straight copy of the original.
So, are these really Rolexes? Eh… hard to say. The easiest way to tell is to REALLY negotiate hard; if they go a fair amount below the price that a real Rolex would sell for, then it’s probably not real.
The other thing to look for is where they’re located. If it’s in a touristy area, they’re probably not real, because they’re selling to people who are going to be gone- and given the troubles involved in international travel, they’re likely not coming back next week to yell at the shop owner.
On the other hand, if they’re located in/near an upscale mall that has plenty of rich locals in it, yeah, they might be real.
My dad knows a shop in Beijing where they sell the *good* knockoffs, and I’ve bought one before online. They’ll run you at least 200 dollars, sometimes as much as 400 (some are made with real gold plating and stuff!).
I have read that the factories that make the knockoff watches (and movements) in China are all run or controlled by the Army or the local Party officials.