Buying things in China

Buying things here is a total pain in the arse. On the plus side, things are cheap and plentiful. On the downside, clothes are ridiculously small with inappropriate colours. I went 'shopping' the other day with a friend, all the shops we passed that I assumed were for girls where in fact for both.

The main problem though is the haggling. There's a foreigner price and a Chinese price for a lot of things in China, even things like train tickets. Speaking a little Chinese means I can sometimes tell when I'm being done. The other day I went to buy a bottle of water near a tourist attraction where my friend was playing in a concert. This normally costs 1.5kuai. She said 5, I said fuck off, 1.5, she said 3, being thirsty I said 2, she said OK. I asked her why she charged me over 200% more than she should do, she said 'because you're a foreigner, this happens in every country'.

Then today I go to this second hand furntiure market. As usual, they start off ridiculously high, but this time they barely lowered their price at all. It seems they would rather sell nothing (this market has very few customers) then not rip me off. I know what the price should be because my Chinese flatmate bought something similar from there. I asked one of the sellers if the price was so high because I'm a waiguoren (foreigner) and he said yes.

I have this one shop I go to to buy toiletries, etc. The shop owner seems nice, I speak Chinese to her, she insists I'm not being done, but you just cannot trust her. It mars the experience.

Of course, some of these guys will sometimes try to charge high prices for Chinese people. And plenty of 'business people' are really nice and honest, especially in the restaurants I regularly go to. But it gets on my wick being viewed as a dollar sign on legs.