For 100 kuai, I'll tell you the secret to bargaining in China.
What's that you say? Fifteen yuan? (Gasp!)
No kidding prices, please. Serious prices, 100 kuai -- friend, for you, that's already a discount. I usually charge 200!
But you're a good friend, so I'll give you the cheaper price.
C'mon, see, this secret's really high quality.
Everybody has developed their own routine for cleaving a meaty percentage off the prices offered by vendors. Most spells are an almost algebraic formula, in which dramatic theatrics, humor and smiles are added, subtracted and multiplied to equal the right price. Some people have labored especially hard to hone their strategies to ensure they have the trickiest bag of tricks possible.
My pal Zhou, for example, told me that if she's buying something, such as a pair of pants, after the seller makes the first offer, she'll scoff and claim her mother ran a garment factory. This, she says, usually slashes the price dramatically in one fell swoop.
The trick, she says, is to remain hyperactively confident in the bluff -- if not, clever vendors will easily see right through the act.
When my buddy Pat found out a large number of the Silk Market vendors hail from Anhui province, he took it upon himself to learn a few bargaining-related phrases in their local dialect.
When these roll off his tongue, it raises eyebrows and lowers prices.
Sunnia was raised in a Cantonese-speaking household in California and lived in Hong Kong for several years, so she keeps an ear out for the dialect in the din of marketplaces.
When a Cantonese blip appears on her linguistic radar, she locks her sites on the target and let loose with rapid-fire guangdonghua, leaving them none the wiser as to her eligibility for the "foreigner tax".
If there's no Cantonese conversation floating through the air, she approaches any seller and just says she's from South China, which excuses her from any slip-ups in Mandarin and usually results in the same tax exemption.
When Pat and Sunnia team up to bargain, they also use the "ice cream" method.
Upon being given an inflated price, they insist that if the item's that expensive, it must come with free ice cream.
This gets everybody smiling and laughing, and "gets them on our side", as Pat says. Such warm exchanges melt most retailers' resolve, but the two have yet to have anyone actually give them a frozen treat.
Yes, there's an arsenal of tactics people can use when battling for the best value.
But the secret to bargaining is that strategy isn't as important as attitude. The main thing here is to realize you' re not just shopping for yourself.
Some foreign friends with pockets thickly lined by handsome expat packages say they don't mind paying a little more for purchases, because it will beef up vendors' incomes. I used to believe that instead, you should fight to save every last fen, because that means you're on a level playing field. Nobody's being condescendingly gracious about their elevated wealth, and there's no perception that anyone's being taken.
But when I chatted about this with a Chinese friend, he explained to me that by giving in and settling on too high a price, you're actually ripping the vendor off.
The way he put it, the work of a hawker can be pretty boring, and banter with customers, the theatrics and humor is the only thing that keeps it interesting.
And enjoying what one does for a living -- that's something it's impossible to put a price on.
(selected from 101 Silly Stories from Cheerful China by China Daily, published by China Intercontinental Press in 2010)