Bargaining in Beijing

Bargaining at a market in Beijing is very fun. The clothes for sale can be very good, and can be bought for very cheap. The people of Beijing are unbelievably nice. They are determined merchants and will try very hard to sell everything they own to you, but after convincing them i would not buy anything from them in chinese, many just wanted to chat. a majority of the vendors at the silk market we visited today (just a name, there were about 7 or so floors with every kind of clothing and trinkets) were female. most of them were the same age as we were and my chinese was strong enough that many just wanted to talk about why we were here and where we were from. many lamented that they wanted to attend college themselves but could not afford it. they were clearly more than intelligent enough. on first glance at us they would all shout at us in english, but tom and i switched to spanish and began conversing in spanish, and the merchants switched with us and began shouting at us in spanish. some in better spanish than ours. we attempted with a few vendors to hide our identity as americans, and they would try french and german on us as well. all the while, their genuine niceness and earnestness was incredible.

although a large amount of clothing was dull or relatively unfashionable or tacky, there was a good amount of nice clothing on sale. I wish to bring back alot of gifts for people. i was able to purchase a very nice and very hip womens shirt and a very nice warm knitted throwover for about 30 dollars total. however, asian fashion is intense enough that although it is completely contemporary and of high quality, the pieces i bought today are different enough from american clothing that i worry that the list of people i could give them to that would make use of them is very very small.

it snowed the first night we arrived. the taxi driver that took us back from the market today told us that it was the first snow of 2006 and it is highly unusual. It was very novel and pretty, but now i look forward to it melting. tom and i have reassembled our skateboards and wish to go out and take advantage of beijings incredibly wide roads and perfect bike lanes.

this morning we visited the temple of heaven in the south of the city. it was indescribable, but i took many photos. its doubtful i will be able to scan them up before i return though.