Today we visited Silk Street, one of Beijing’s famous shopping centers. Silk street, despite its name, is actually a building with about 6 floors of various types of shops. This trip was a good chance to brush up on my bargaining skills. Initially, I was hoping to get a suit tailored, but I soon realized it would cost me an arm and a leg as well as a day to make, so I opted out of that. I ended up purchasing a wall scroll with a nice depiction of the Great Wall. Managed to bargain the guy down from 800 Yuan to 230, which according to Xinli was still a bit pricey. All in all I ended up with the scroll and nice Chinese style shirt. Some of the other students got ripped off. If I wasn’t informed before we arrived, I wouldn’t have known the list price of those items are at least 10 times as expensive as the actual price. When patroning the silk street shops, I would recommend to stay away from the electronics and lean towards the clothing. All the trinkets they sell can probably be bought somewhere else for less, such as in Shanghai or Huangshan. All in all, Silk Street was a valuable learning experience about bargaining. I can’t wait to try out

what I learned in State College! 

-Colin Slavtcheff