Shopping

I hate shopping. It is without a doubt one of my least favorite things to do. All the standing around drives me crazy. Dealing with so many people gives me a headache. I feel like I’m always being ripped off, and to eliminate that feeling would require months of research that I’m not willing to do. And once I buy something I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as if thousands of people are agreeing somewhere that I’m an idiot for spending that much on that thing.

This trip to China would seem an ideal opportunity for shopping. It’s well known that just about everything is negotiable, most of the world’s goods are produced here, and Shijiazhuang is decidedly off the tourist path. This blog’s readership is largely family and close friends who are likely excited to see what goodies I may bring home to them. Let this post properly set expectations for those people.

The intensity levels of the ridiculous anxieties I listed in the opening paragraph, like just about everything else, approach infinity in China. We recently made an excursion to the local tech mall to buy some unneeded electronics gear. The tech mall is basically a three level madhouse with thousands of booths selling all sorts of what appear to be brand name gadgets. One would think the prices would be low, but I priced some headphones and found them to be 150% the price found on Amazon. And negotiations, particularly for someone who looks like me, are arduous at best. But the previous day Mukul had gotten a pretty good package deal on a hard drive and media player, so four of us sought to replicate his success. We brought along a secret weapon – Emily – who, as a local, could undoubtedly negotiate a killer deal for us.

No, I think the on switch is over here

For some reason our entire crew showed up at the vendor to explain to Emily what we wanted. The opening price was high. We turned to Mukul who quoted his price from the previous day. The vendor reluctantly agreed, but somehow when multiplied by four it rose on a per unit basis. We were not that dumb. We then left Emily to shop around for the best price while we grabbed some food on the street.

Clouds gather at the tech mall, foreshadowing some trouble ahead in my story

Hours later we returned. The Mukul price had not changed, despite our having left the premises. Apparently the vendor was not that dumb, either. Eventually we each shelled out the Mukul price for our goodies while Mukul enjoyed a moment of smugness over his negotiating prowess. Meanwhile, by this time the shopping had gotten to me and I was feeling a bit woozy. I had just bought something I wasn’t sure I needed, had offered zero value to our negotiating efforts due to my relative lack of knowledge on the subject, it took what felt like 18 hours of standing around to accomplish, and there were literally thousands of people looking at me actually thinking, “That guy is an idiot. Let’s charge him way over American prices for what might be knock-off stuff that he has no opportunity whatsoever to return when it breaks.” I was beginning to get that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Then I remembered the ice cream. I’m a sucker for ice cream. I love it. So I bought some on the street and ate it with glee. Afterwards, Tom made it clear to me that I was an idiot for making that purchase.

“Ice cream is one thing I never eat in these places. First of all, they use local water, which is never good. Second of all it’s dairy, which spoils easily.”

I bid a hasty farewell to my colleagues and began racing through the street in the direction of the hotel. My stomach was now in a knot. I flew past noisy vendors and a massive construction project to reach the main street that separated me from my toilet. To cross this 8-lane beast requires mad Frogger skills. Just when you’ve run from the buses that seem not to be equipped with brakes (the horns work brilliantly, though), you need to stand perfectly still while racing taxis straddle you, then you make a desperate dash for the center divide. If you do this right, by now you’ve joined some locals who form a perfectly straight line that moves forward like an advancing front and becomes a de facto lane divider, thankfully the one lane divider that cars tend to obey. One step out of line and you may lose a limb. Once across the street it’s easy to think the ordeal is over, only to step into the bike lane and be buzzed by twenty silent but deadly electronic scooters whose horns come on in unison as you take your first misguided step, scaring the bejeezus out of you.

This picture doesn't come anywhere close to doing it justice

I had made it. Now it was time to race the three blocks to Motel 168, but by the time I got there I’d forgotten why I was running. It turns out that the ice cream was not the problem. Shopping, as always, was the problem.

It’s fitting that I turned down an invitation from Tom to take a long walk and “maybe do some shopping” in order to write this blog. And it’s ridiculous that the above was the shorter and less interesting shopping story that I wanted to write in this post, so the story of the Great Carrefour Chase will have to be told later.

Not ice cream