If you hit any market outside your hotel or the comfy confines of one of the many easy Friendship Stores throughout the town, you will fairly be able to say that you lived the Chinese shopping scene. Expect it to be busy, hectic, chaotic, bustling and loaded to the gills with an opportunity at every turn to haggle unto your heart’s content.
Some people don’t like haggling, and if that’s your case, you’re going in to the wrong place. Germany has a famously regimented public market system, where the price is the price is the price, and you’re fully welcome to take it or leave it, but there’s no haggling to be done, and pardon me for sounding racist, the Germans can’t haggle worth a damn.
As a teen I had the chance to take an exceptionally bright German to the haggle-laden markets of Tijuana. He saw a leather jacket he liked, knew he was supposed to negotiate a price, so tried to take the merchant from $200 down to $10, and it only got worse from there.
The merchant (rightly) said, “$10? For that price I’ll sell you a straight jacket, mister, I have to feed my family.” Neither of the two understood that they other was significantly less than fluent in their shared English language, so Frank replied to the merchant, “Okay, let me see this straight jacket.”
We pulled him away before it got much uglier, thankfully. Whatever you do, don’t introduce Germans to Mexicans. Their cultures are too different and I’ve never seen anything but misunderstanding and impending violence, but we can talk about that privately. Today the question is, how should you haggle?
In Mexico, the standard I’ve experienced has taught me that I should only pay about 70% of the asking price. The guy says 100 pesos, I should pay 70. Sadly, most westerners take this belief with them to China, and it only makes it worse for the rest of us. Never pay 70% of the asking price, not on anything at all, ever.
Shop around the market before you buy, favor the merchants that don’t verbally accost you to make the sale, and pay significantly less than the asking price. Do this and you’ll quickly learn that shopping in the market isn’t just fun, but it can also be a great way to stock up on a decade’s worth of socks, underwear, neck ties, CD cases, wallets, watches and a myriad other things you didn’t realize could be had for less back home.
