Buying things

When you arrive in a country, the first thing you want is to contact people and the second thing is to buy things: We naively thought that, as most things were manufactured in China, and since the average wage is low, that prices would be low too; in fact, for everything other than fresh food and poor quality clothes the prices are higher - in the case of electronics, much higher. Beijing is full of immaculate malls with international brand names and acres of marble but very few Chinese can buy the items and those who can are so wealthy that they don't care about the prices. The middle class may be growing but big brands seem to be able to make more from selling a few items at a ridiculous premium than from selling many items to the rising middle classes.

When you do want to buy something, you face another problem - in most stores, an assistant will write you a receipt which you then have to take to the cash desk, the cash person will then take your money, count it several times and then issue you with a receipt which you must then take back to the assistant. We now understand that you can bargain with the first assistant. That doesn't sound difficult but the whole process can take hours while different assistants get involved; your credit card payment is refused and you have to be walked to a bank by yet another assistant. In Carrefour, you have to go through this process then provide all of the receipts for all of the items to the security guard on the door (even if he has just watched you pay for them).