Just One of the Crowd in Beijing! - Part 2

---

Hi all, forgot to add the videos to the blogs. We travelled the Jinyu street food markets. Remember though this market is catered for the tourists. Prices are higher but the experience is great! One thing you do have to do is to know the price of your purchase before you buy because as with all markets they are there to make money and if you can't read the sign and figure out the fruit stick should only be 5yuan and you pay 15 the vendor is not going to say a thing!

The second video is the backstreet market of the mall. This had more local atmosphere, still touristy, but more realistic prices. This place is cool, crowded and busy. Some of the food is the same as the street market but it has more restaurants and a trinket ally. Bargain hard here. A wiser man than we, told us in these markets and the silk street markets YOU WAIT FOR THE OPENING OFFER AND THEN OFFER 10%!O(MISSING)F THEIR PRICE then negotiations begin but do not go any higher than 15%!,(MISSING) I kid you not. and it worked. For example shoes, they were asking 800yuan (this was my special price from 1300) so I said 100 we bartered and settled on 160yuan so I bought 2 pair. That is roughly 30 Aussie dollars for genuine Asics knockoff. It is a cool place where we spent nearly a whole day bargaining for shirts and stuff. Goretex jackets, Calvin Kline underwear & shirts, Dolce & Gabbana, Custo, hey look lets face it I don't usually buy these brands so i cant list them all, 6 floors, including Jewellery, electronics and toys. All eager to make a deal. They do get touchy though when you tell other tourists how to bargain I was ushered out of a couple of stalls for this but it is hard to stand by and watch as a poor tourist is fleeced. (sometimes badly). The shoe floors seemed to be the most aggressive with it feeling like you were being grabbed from all angles and you were most times. Come in please! Have a look my shop! and once you're in you turn around and surprisingly there is 2 other shop assistance blocking the only exit. So it takes a strong person to push through, they have no qualms about holding your arm to keep you too! It is all in fun so don't go in there with a attitude but do do some research on prices.
Oh! I forgot one thing I was really amazed with were the shop assistants linguistic ability, besides Chinese most of the people I spoke to spoke from 4 to 7 different basic languages (hello, and numbers), Spanish, Russian, French, German, English etc it was truly amazing the adaptive ability of the staff here. A girl I was talking to frequently broke from our conversation as people walked buy and offered her wares in a multitude of languages as other tourists passed buy.

---