A Bristling Experience at the Silk Market...

Hai Ling (Halley) and me at the subway station.

An Jie (Angela) and me ... I know I look about 30 pounds heavier in this picture.

Me and the guy who sold me an overpriced silk bathrobe.

As our CET program director so wisely told us on the first day of orientation, 'Some days you will have completely positive cultural exchanges with the people around you, on those days you want to stay in China forever. Other days everything will go wrong, you will fail to communicate and want to leave the next day.' While today wasn't exactly the latter I did have my first really non-pleasant exchange.

After my test went really well this morning, I decided that it would be a great idea to go explore the silk market with some friends. I know it is a tourist trap and full of people trying to charge you about three times what anything is really worth. Nonetheless, I thought it would be interesting and excessive kitsch is always fun to look at. Besides I had not yet made it out to that side of town. So An Jie, Hai Ling and I all set out for foreign embassy district.

Getting there was fine. The subway system is very navigable, but once we got out to that end of town we were all a little disappointed. There were lots of foreigners and expensive western restaurants, not exactly the adventure we had imagined. But we did make it to the pearl market, where we found TONS of knock off hand bags, designer jeans, shoes...you name it. Due to our apparently adorable Chinese speaking skills most merchants were pretty willing to make a deal with us. Each of us bought one item, and we were getting ready to leave when a pair of Vans slip ons caught my eye.

For those of you who don't know my lovely younger sister is a Vans slip on fanatic. The pair I saw were so cute, and were even in Joie's size. I was very excited. First of all the stall merchant wanted to charge us 280 yuan for the shoes . Way too much, for shoes that I know aren't the real deal. I figured I could work around it, so I had Hai Ling try them on since she is about Joie's size in shoe.

Now I wouldn't consider myself bad at bartering but I think Hai Ling is definitely an expert. So I let her do most of the talking. We had nearly reached an agreement, when the merchant just started sort of chatting up Hai Ling. I kind of phased out and was looking at other shoes when I heard her say very plainly in Chinese, that Hai Ling was much smarter than me, in fact she said it twice. I know she thought I couldn't understand. Most days something like this probably just would have made me laugh, but it ticked me off that she would say right in front of me. I promptly turned around and told her in Chinese that I was probably not even smart enough to take her good offer on the shoes (the offer wasn't really that good).

She just sort of looked at me stunned. As we pushed our way out she tried to apologize but I just brushed past. I don't feel that was a cultural misunderstanding. I feel it was a really presumptuous and stupid thing for her to do. I wasn't about to buy shoes from someone who just insulted my intelligence. Besides I know there are plenty of other places to buy knock off Vans for my little sister, and I want to make sure they are the ones she wants ;) Hai Ling and An Jie agreed that I did the right thing, which made me feel a little less irrational.

Other than that our trip was pretty fun. It was great pretending that we didn't speak any English, it made the market a little more navigable. There was tons of 'lady, lady come lookie' and 'i make cheaper for you because you beautiful.' But I just had to buy something from the merchant pictured above. He was too cute. When he figured out that we would only speak Chinese, he really started speaking with us. He asked how long we had been in Beijing, where we were from etc... I know he overcharged me about twenty kuai for the bathrobe I bought from him but I have two feelings about this. One is that these people are just trying to make a somewhat honest living, and I can't fault them for overcharging well off foreigners. The other is that twenty kuai to me is less than $3, but here it can go a long way, and while I don't want to get ripped off, sometimes overpaying just a tad is probably not such an awful thing.

I feel like my spoken Chinese really is getting better everyday. My exchanges with my roommate have gotten much deeper, and though my pronunciation is still a little shaky I feel like I have a good idea of how to express what I need. Of course, all in good time, I know I can't learn it overnight. So even though I had one not so great encounter today, I also had some very positive ones with my teachers, my roommate and my friends. And hey at least my listening comprehension is good enough that I can realize I'm being talked about! ;)