Day 67: Ke Yi Ma?

I have never enjoyed bartering more than I have today. We ventured to the pearl market this afternoon and we were in awe with it all when we arrived. There were hundreds of vendors inside this six story shopping mall, all trying to get your attention and give you "the best price" or the "best quality" item. However, all of the items were the exact same, but some vendors were harder to haggle with, so we had to hop from shop to shop to find a price we were willing to pay.

At first, I wasn't very good at this art, I might call it. It was quite difficult, and it didn't help that some of the vendors were super mean and told us to get out of their shop because our offers were ridiculous, or impossible. After a few defeating situations, I just decided to take a different approach to bartering: joke with the vendor, kiss their hand, kneel down and say "ke yi ma?" or a few other things. This little act won many of them over. Ke yi ma is like a sincere please, and I plead with them over and over, with the saddest face and they just laughed and smiled at me. However, their laughter turned into a friendship, they lowered their price, so we both won. It's much better to be entertaining and have fun with it than argue with them, right?

I think my favorite purchase of the day was this pair of coral keds. The keds are cute, but the process of purchasing them was much more rewarding than the shoes themselves. There were three ladies all selling shoes next to each other, and each had a different approach to trying to get me to buy their shoes. One was really forceful, one tried like cuddling with me and telling me I was beautiful and needed her shoes, and the other was more ordinary in her approach. After my charades to barter them down, they all joined together and created conversation with me and put aside trying to sell me something. I found out that the cuddly one was only 15 years old and the forceful one was her mother, who was 32, but they explained she was her husband's second wife, so the fifteen year old is her husbands' other wife's daughter, confusing, I know. The third one was just a very close friend of theirs, and she was married and had a seven year old little boy. How we found out that she was married was rather interesting; I saw a hickie on her neck and jokingly asked who gave it to her. She giggled and claimed that her husband did, but I thought she looked far too young to be married, let alone to have a seven year old boy. Anyways, after many jokes and laughs, they offered me the price I wanted for the keds only if a boy would too kiss my neck and give me a hickie, like our new friend had. Carmelo was the only boy with us and I wanted the shoes, so he just gave me a soft kiss on the neck. Fortunately, I have rather sensitive skin, so it instantly turned red and looked as if it could possibly be one, so the ladies gave me a discount on the shoes. I was dying, they were such a funny bunch.

We ended the evening with a trip to the temple of heaven, which is the most holy of temples in China. This was a wonderful time to go, too, because we saw it just in time for the sunset to light up the sky. We also got to see the kites they fly over the bridge there and they were illuminated; It felt like the Fourth of July. I couldn't have been happier with how the day went, but then it just got more eventful from there. We stumbled across a group or older Chinese people who were singing karaoke on our way out of the park. We approached them and as soon as they saw us, we were instantly summoned to sing. So, Courtney, Jenna, Cameron, and I sang a Michael Jackson song (the only American music they had) and then tried to leave the stage, only to be encored, five more times. It was rather entertaining and we were terrible, but it was a lot of fun. Needles to say, it was another good day in this wonderful city.