Pro-style haggling
I did my first bit of haggling tonight, and I think it went pretty well. The other Padawan Teachers and I went out drinking to celebrate our first week on the job. We ended up in Ho Hai, which is a big tourist area that attracts a lot of expats. I wish I could tell you where in Beijing it was, but I was pretty drunk on the cab ride over and I lost any semblance of direction.
When we got to Ho Hai there was a big public dance going on in a plaza. The 5 of us were just watching when this elderly Chinese impresario insisted that we dance. He tried to bond with us by constantly saying "we love Obama!" to us. So we wandered into the crowd. Like any good grade school dance, there was a mass of people surrounding the dance area, but no one actually dancing. I decided to kick things off and jumped into the middle. I guess you could call what I was doing "dancing," but only really by analogy. But it did get the Chinese to join in. In fact, this one Chinese girl walked up to me and started grinding. We did that for about a minute, and then I never saw her again. Oh well. We'll always have Beijing.
Where was I? Oh yes, haggling. Well, we wandered around after the dance. I saw this guy selling an awesome high-powered laser pointer. I walked up to him and asked him 多少钱？(how much does it cost?). He replied "150 yuan." Now, this only works out to be about 22 dollars, but I was in no mood to pay that much. Also, I didn't have anywhere near that much on me. I haggled him down to 70 Yuan, but that still seemed too much. Finally I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: I walked away. After I went about 10 feet he ran after me shouting "50! 50!". I forked it over. That works out to about 8 bucks, and this same laser pointer in America would cost me around $100 (yeah, I checked). So mission accomplished. The laser pointer itself is great. At night you can see the dot on buildings hundreds of feet away. My room is on the 19th floor, and I could shine it all the way down to the plaza outside my building and bother passers-by (which I did for about an hour. Yeah, I'm that easily amused). I'm looking forwards to using it to dazzle my students on Monday.
So till next time, this is a very self-satisfied Ignorant Westerner saying 再见!
When we got to Ho Hai there was a big public dance going on in a plaza. The 5 of us were just watching when this elderly Chinese impresario insisted that we dance. He tried to bond with us by constantly saying "we love Obama!" to us. So we wandered into the crowd. Like any good grade school dance, there was a mass of people surrounding the dance area, but no one actually dancing. I decided to kick things off and jumped into the middle. I guess you could call what I was doing "dancing," but only really by analogy. But it did get the Chinese to join in. In fact, this one Chinese girl walked up to me and started grinding. We did that for about a minute, and then I never saw her again. Oh well. We'll always have Beijing.
Where was I? Oh yes, haggling. Well, we wandered around after the dance. I saw this guy selling an awesome high-powered laser pointer. I walked up to him and asked him 多少钱？(how much does it cost?). He replied "150 yuan." Now, this only works out to be about 22 dollars, but I was in no mood to pay that much. Also, I didn't have anywhere near that much on me. I haggled him down to 70 Yuan, but that still seemed too much. Finally I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: I walked away. After I went about 10 feet he ran after me shouting "50! 50!". I forked it over. That works out to about 8 bucks, and this same laser pointer in America would cost me around $100 (yeah, I checked). So mission accomplished. The laser pointer itself is great. At night you can see the dot on buildings hundreds of feet away. My room is on the 19th floor, and I could shine it all the way down to the plaza outside my building and bother passers-by (which I did for about an hour. Yeah, I'm that easily amused). I'm looking forwards to using it to dazzle my students on Monday.
So till next time, this is a very self-satisfied Ignorant Westerner saying 再见!