We finally found a shop inside a jewelry type mall that had pearls and I was afraid they would be incredibly high priced, but after much hunting through strands and bargaining, I was able to bring their price down to what I felt was acceptable. They were very shiny and beautiful and I bought 7 strands. I have wanted black pearls for years, but the only nice quality ones were their individual pearls for sale and they wanted 10 yuan, or about 1.30 per pearl and absolutely would not budge on their price. They said that 10 yuan was still wholesale and that individual pearls are their best quality and that is why they are not on strands. I could see that a necklace of those was going to be pricey so I decided I could live without black pearls.

After our purchase, we still had about 20 minutes to spare, so we decided to look at some jade. I started bartering with a man who wanted 650 yuan or about 83.00 for a bracelet. I told him that it was too high and he told me it was because of the quality. It was a very beautiful bracelet, so I decided to see how badly he wanted to sell it. I told him his price was way too high and punched 100 yuan into the caculator. This brought gales of laughter from him and his colleagues who gathered around. He told me 600 was his best price and as low as he would go.

Here, when you barter, the more you buy, the cheaper the price, so I asked him how low he would go if I bought two bracelets. He brought out another one that was not as high quality as the first but was still very pretty. He told me 900 for two. OK, now we had come down to about 450 per bracelet, but I still had work to do. I told him 200 yuan and he seemed disgusted. He told me to come up on my price and each time he would drop about 25 yuan, I would add about ten. He came down to about 700 and I typed in 425. He said no way and so I turned to walk away.

He called me back and came down another 25 yuan and asked me to come up in price. This time I went from 425 to 426 while smiling the whole time as I punched the numbers into the calculator. He and the two other men watching thought this was pretty hilarous and roared. He said 650 and I said 450. He shook his head "no", and I said it was my final price. He asked if I would pay
600 and I told him 475. He thought about it a moment and finally said OK. 30.00 bucks per bracelet....not a bad deal, and all that with 10 minutes to spare. Of course we couldn't let our last 10 minutes go to waste so we bought some jade rings as well and headed for the street to catch a taxi back to the hotel where Jeff and the younger kids were waiting. Mission accomplished.