Shopping in China is quite nice since everything is so cheap!!! But beware ... it might not be at all pleasant especially in the flea market or in the tourist area ...
From what we were told by our tour guide.... everything you see at the tourist shops could be half as much outside in the streets if not...even less than that! We had to learn the very hard way...
We bought this one stone massager tool, so before I bought it I asked the shop where we had tour how much it costed so I know what to expect to pay outside. Price in the shop was 20 Yuan. Saw it in the flee market and the seller told us that it's 89 Yuan... HELL NO! that's insane ...as we walked away he asked how much we want to buy it for and we made an offer of 10 yuan... and SOLD! That's the kind of bs #s that they'd throw at you!!! So be very careful!!! And they are usually very rude but don't mind it at all... don't feel bad even if you low ball it because hey... if they sell it to you then they're definitely made enough money. And if you're uncomfortable with the price and think it's not worth it, then it's usually is! =0)
Another incident that we got ripped-off good. Since things are so darn cheap, we didn't think twice about buying food and that's when they shelled us out knowing that we are foreigners.
We went to this food stall that sells fried banana and ordered two! Turns out it cost us 30 Yuan! That's $5 for two piece of dough! That's just ridiculous and it's not even good! We were like "WHAT?" the guy had pointed out to the sign in the back with the # 15 with a bunch of chinese written next to it ... as if we could read them... but we went ahead and paid him since we already ordered! $5 for two piece of dough! So we learned... always asked how much it is before buying anything!!!!!
There you go! $5 for that...
Then there's this ... crabs stick... lesson learned ... asked for the price before you buy!!! So we were told that it's 20 Yuan each. So we were like okay that's not bad so while they drop it in the deep frying pan and chatted us up. When it's ready they hand it over and asked for 60 YUAN! WHAT THE HELL? they said that it's 20 Yuan per crab and since it's three on a stick so it's 60 Yuan... and again with the pointing to the board with the # BS!!!! And we swore to never eat street food again... first of all, people is out there to grill you and the quality is not even good enough for a fraction of the price!!! Well, not even good enough to eat to be honest!!!
Not WORTH IT!!!!
But then again... we got tons of other stuffs for cheap that's really worth it too!
Like these!!!
Seller asked for $20 we offered $6.5 and SOLD!!! =0) This kite expands out to 6ft. long and it's very well made! My husband loved it!!!! And we had to carry it on the plane cuz we can't stuff it in our luggage even though the wings can be folded down!
One of my favorite is this doll set... I use to think that if I travel I'd try to collect ethnic costumes but only to find out from my other trips that they end up in a box somewhere in the house. It's impossible to display all of them in our place... so I changed my collections to dolls ... which is great because they have their ethnic clothes on and they're awfully cute and it doesn't take up too much room!!!
I bought this at the Forbidden City for 80 Yuan in the shops there... so no bargain although at some shops you could still do that ... it's was our first purchase so we didn't know better ... so that turns out to be about $12 ... but then I found the exact same thing on the street shop for 90 Yuan but it was much better quality... they're supposedly soft plastic piggy banks but the ones I bought were hard plastic ... one of the head broke off in my jammed luggage ... but there's nothing a little glue can't fix!!!! =0)
I also got this really cute pair of shoes for $5!!!
It's not something you could really wear everyday and chances are you have about a week to wear them down to rags, but they're just so darn cute and cheap.... so whatever! LOL
Those purchases are chump change but fun!
My husband got into some serious shopping at the tea and tea pot places where he spend $500 on one of his tea sets among others as gifts, I haven't seen anyone who's into tea as much as he is so I didn't care how much he spends on them (yes... we found out now that the tea pot he bought is not worth $500! surprise!!!! not really)
So overall it was fun shopping there!!!
EXCEPT for this one place we went to that produce and sell REAL SILK!!! They claimed to sell only REAL SILK and everything in that place is REAL!!!! and that's just BS!!!
I bought two pillow covers similar to these except in yellow shelling out $40 for them... turns out they're FAKE!!! It's not real silk!!! How did I know??? See... there's a trick... if you burn real silk there should be a smooth line where the burn is, unlike plastic where the burn mark would have plastic bubbled up and feels rough! So once I got home and wanted to see if it's really true so I burned a corner of the inside of the case and tah dah!!! IT'S F... POLYESTER...PLASTIC!!!! The same thing cost $3 on the streets!!! ARGGGGGGG and this was so called "GOVERNMENT OWN AND OPERATE!!!" It's was an F... scam!!!!! Also bought a fancy scarf for my mother in law... I think I'd cough up blood to find that fake too... but I don't think I can deal with the disappointment.... plus I can't really burn a corner of it and not have it noticed!
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