My Guide to Haggling in China

1. Deal with Shock

The first thing you need to do is prepare for the shock. Walking into a Chinese market can be a dizzying assault on the senses. There are too many people, the sales people are too aggressive and don’t respect your personal space, and all in all there is a palpable atmosphere of mayhem.


As soon as you get past one person who grabs you shouting, “Rolex Rolex DVD DVD looky looky”, another one tries his luck. “Bag bag bag looky looky Nike Nike Yellow DVD.”  Yellow DVDs are pornos.  But mostly Japanese ones with the good bits pixelated out.


If someone grabs you, you can shout 'bu xing!' (Which pompously translates as 'That won't do!')

2. Learn to Ignore

You're in a situation where normal standards of politeness aren't going to work.  You have to ignore everyone.  You have to!  It's hard to accept at first, especially if you've been taught to, like, respect other people and stuff. But you have to ignore everyone and focus on what you want.


If ignoring people offends your sensibilities, you can politely decline what they have to offer. 'bu yao!' (Don't want.)

3. Walk Around a Bit

It's important not to go straight to the first stall. Let's assume you want a fake Louis Vuitton handbag as a gift for your mistress. If you walk past a few bag stalls you can try to play them off against each other. Liang bai kuai? Ta shuo le san shi kuai! (200 bucks? She said thirty!)

4. Carry an Umbrella

Haggling is acting. You need props. An umbrella is the perfect wingman. You can point with it, drop it in astonishment, tap it impatiently, or hit yourself on the head with it.


Or, importantly, lean on it:

5. Begin Haggling

The first step of the process is pointing to something with your umbrella and asking the price. Duoshao qian? (How much?)


It is VERY IMPORTANT that you laugh at whatever he says. If you don't understand Chinese numbers, don't laugh at this stage. Shrug, and the stallkeeper will type the price into a calculator and show you the screen. Laugh now. This is his first price for really stupid foreign devils and you are sharing his joke. What a character!


But now you want the real price. As a rule of thumb, you can probably expect him to accept 10-20% of the first price. If he says 300, he means 30.

6. Go Slowly

When serving food, a Chinese person will say 'man man chi' (eat slowly) to his guest. Haggle slowly and you'll get more discount. The more theatrical your performance, the greater the discount. The more friends you have acting along with you ('bad cop' is the best supporting role if you only have one friend) the greater the discount.  If you have more friends, get them to play more roles.  I once went with three friends and we did the cast of Seinfeld.

7. Case Study

You want to buy some trainers. The woman asks for 400 RMB. You laugh, she laughs. Now what?


If she has a little stool, sit down, and get settled. Offer 50. 'Wu shi'. Sit forward on your umbrella, preferably leaning your chin on the handle.


Begin pleading, shaking your head, looking to the heavens, sighing, leaving long silences, pretending to be angry, shrugging your shoulders, and mumbling instructions to your team mates (“Point to your own shoes and talk quickly in English… Put your hands on your hips… Try to get me to leave…”)

8. Nukes

If things aren't going well, try these useful phrases:


wei shen me ni bu xi huan wo? (Why do you hate me?)
wo bu shi you qian ren (I'm not a rich guy)
tai gui le! you liangge er nai (That's too expensive. I have two mistresses to keep)
ni shi huai dan! (You're a bad egg)
wo gei ni san bai kuai, wo diao lian (If I give you three hundred bucks I'll lose face)

9. Final Tip

Walk away. If you agree on a price before walking away, you are paying too much. If you can't get the stallkeeper to go lower than 50, walk away. She will call you back and say 'okay 40'. If she doesn't call you back, it means 50 is her lowest price. Go back and pay it!
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The Early Bird Catches the Towel

The Early Bird Catches the Towel


The cockroaches slept; I could not. I tried Chinese medicine, and bought a hot water bottle, but I didn’t have a decent night’s sleep until I bought a space heater. By then it was nearly spring. I wish I’d bought it three months earlier – Susan might have slept with me then. That’s how cold it was.

Art and Artifice

“Susan, you can stay here as long as you want. Really, it’s no problem.” At this point most hot women I’ve met would frown and call me ‘creepy’. But Susan smiled and said, “Oh, that’s so sweet!” She spoke with a Dutch accent. She was sexy and beautiful. She had long hair, was tall, and wore a blue scuba diving outfit. “You must be Andrew," she said. I’d only been obsessed with her for two minutes and she already knew I existed. I was making tremendous progress.

She got into the bed next to me, and Dani got in next to her. They didn’t like the movie I was watching, so they talked. Dani said she had slept with a Chinese girl in Beijing, and the Chinese girl had worn paper underwear. Susan squirmed with delight. To understand the word ‘squirmed’ in this context, imagine seductive dancing as a reflex action. “Paper underwear! Paper underwear!” I said, trying to make her do it again.

As Susan talked, I stared at her. Her hair was burnt umber, she had an earring in the top of her ear as well as the bottom, and one tress of hair liked to fall in front of her right eye, which was the equal of the left for perfection. Her lips were suggestive; cameras dreamed about her cheek bones. Her tight scuba outfit left little, and yet so much, to the imagination. Imagine the most perfect woman you have ever seen, and then know that Susan makes her look like a bored child’s drawing on a balloon.

I asked if she had a job. She said she ‘made art.’ “Oh good,” I said, switching to a low, sincere voice, “Art is really important to me. I think art speaks to me about my life. Art helps to show me how to live. It tells me about who I am and where I am going. I really try to make time to think about art and what art means to me.” Susan was moved. “That’s how I feel about art!”

Dani changed the subject so she could complain about Martin. She was annoyed that he was pretending to be a gentleman instead of ravishing her. Susan said, “So he never even tried to kiss you, you just watched DVDs together, he never said, ‘Oh we’ve been doing this for some time now, I think we can be more than friends,’ or something like that?” “No.”

I realised my 20-minute relationship with Susan had developed along similar lines to Dani and Martin’s, i.e. we watched DVDs together but didn’t talk about our feelings. I drew myself up and turned to look into Susan’s eyes. “Susan, there’s something I’d like to tell you,” I said. “We’ve been doing this for some time, and I’d like to express my true feelings for you.” “Do you mean ‘express’, or ‘tell’?” She was leading me on! I had lost the element of surprise. “Er… tell. Please allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and respect you, as a woman and as an artist.” She giggled. Dani shook her head at me. “Andrew, you’re not interested in art. I’ve never heard you mention art, ever. Why are you being so weird?”

Dani hadn’t seen me flirting before so she didn’t know that’s what it was.

When Andrew Met Susan

Winter in Shanghai chills you to the atom. You lose 70% of your neutrons – they freeze and fall to the floor – and the electrons in your extremities hibernate, impairing your motor functions. You can’t write, eat, or dance naked, and sex is only possible after a very hot bath. And you can’t run a bath because it leaks into the apartment below and they shout at you in Chinese.

Dani had rearranged the living room so she could sleep there. She claimed it was warmer than her bedroom. For someone so creative her methods were rather crude: She shoved the dinner table to one side, pushed our wooden sofa-benches (so cold now, like marble) against the walls and dumped her mattress in the space she had cleared. There she slept for 3 months. She moved the TV and DVD player to within inches of the bed, bought a hot water bottle, and sprinkled the bed with woollen gloves and my hats – I think she was trying to achieve a critical mass of warm objects that would generate limitless amounts of heat.

Thus when she brought Susan home I was in her bed, wearing a hat, watching Jackie Chan.

“Andrew,” said Dani, and I felt the thrill I feel when a girl, any girl, says my name. “This is Susan.” Jackie Chan was fighting a large man in a room containing a ladder – there’s always a ladder scene in his movies, but it’s always worth watching. I turned my head, bravely exposing my neck to the cold. I saw Susan.

Dani had met her in some weird place – perhaps Greek Yoga class, or the three-minute holistic sauna at the gym – I didn’t pay much attention at the time because I didn’t realise Susan was beautiful. Susan was having some problems and needed a place to stay until she got herself sorted. I had said she could stay with us ‘for a bit.’

When I saw her, my first words were, “Susan, you can stay here for as long as you want.” People like me can understand chemistry, but only people like Susan can create it.
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