Shopping in Shanghai

Plan on spending at least 3 hours when shopping in a Chinese department store, no matter how well prepared you are before you enter. You will NEVER locate the elevators, so don't bother trying. Take the escalator to your floor (most things you need will be on the 6th or 7th floor) and try to locate your item. The sales team does not speak English and they are not there to assist you. Find it yourself. Once the item is located, find a salesperson and use your body language to communicate your desire to own the item. She will soon disappear to a back room to locate a stack of invoices. Upon her return, she must write down the information on the item (sku/price/whatever else) and provide you with a copy to take to the cashier. In most department stores, there is a single cashier on each floor located in an out-of-the-way cubbyhole. If this is your lucky day, the sales clerk will point you in the right direction. If it is not, increase your time allotment to 4 hours. Once you've found the cashier, you must determine what credit cards, if any, they accept. Most accept some form of credit card, although the stores catering primarily to locals will only accept local credit cards and cash. Upon completing the transaction, you will be given a receipt which you will provide to the sales clerk in return for your item. Many stores will require you to go to a third location to obtain a second receipt. This will not be on the same floor. For items requiring delivery (remember, you don't have a car; you are taking a taxi), you will need to make at least one additional stop. No one at the delivery counter will speak English either, so get your cell phone out and call your good Chinese friend to act as a translator. Delivery - Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. They will come Thursday at 3:00 p.m. but don't let this bother you too much. Remember your cable company in the US.

Bargaining. You bargain for almost everything except food in "grocery stores" and clothing at western style department stores. Many westerners find this tiresome. Often, you are haggling over pennies for an item you don't really need and are certain isn't what they are telling you it is. "It's an antique pipe from Shanxxi province. Ming Dynasty." Really? Are you sure because it looks like a stone carving of Mao circa 1973.

We find ourselves bargaining not because we want to save money and get the best price or for the love of bargaining. We do it to save face. We don't want the other people in the store to think we are stupid tourists. We don't want the store keeper to think he or she "won". When we walk away we want people around us to be impressed with our bargaining skills and try to emulate them. Fact: No Chinese merchant has every taken a hit selling you a bad concrete likeness of Mao that just rolled off the line yesterday. The second you walk out the door, the merchant will reach behind the cabinet and pull out another antique that looks surprisingly like the one he/she sold you. And probably call in an order for 10 more because he can't believe the margins he was able to get.