I wish I took photos but I was busy trying to keep a bunch of women from annihilating each other.
So the story goes like this.
If you haven’t read my last blog post do so. It was about me yelling at someone, which, I don’t like to do but it sets up this story quite well.
We were in Beijing walking through a clothing market. A famous one. We had gotten done with the main ground level floor and decided to head down to a lower level to scope some more things. The first thing we see at the bottom of the escalator is hand bags. Knock off LV and what not. My friends brother and I stop to take a look. He was in the market for a nice ladies hand bag and I decided to lend a hand. He asked about some LV or something. I don’t remember. She had to “open a secret compartment” under a shelf to get to the stash. She also kept saying that she wasn’t supposed to do this. Yeah right. Either way here is what happened.
I told my friends brother not to act interested. Kind of like, ugh, it’s ok, kind of face. He found one that he liked and asked how much, she said 800 yuan. I have no idea what the going rate for a knock off designer handbag is but I know it’s not over 100 USD. So I then told her Ill give you 80 yuan. 10%. Nice little starting point. At that point my friends wife rolls over to see what we are doing. The vendor starts saying that’s way too low and we have to offer higher. It’s real leather etc. So we went a little more and then I told My friends wife to take over. I left the shop, or rather cubicle and stood outside.
At that point the vendor had blocked my buddies friend into the rear of the shop and proceeded to wave a calculator saying “ok, ok, ok” I assume she had a price on the screen that she wanted him to pay. So the wife grabs one arm of the brother and starts to take him out of the store. The vendor girl grabs the other arm of the brother, still asking him to buy. He’s in between trying to get out of the store. I guess that he didn’t want to buy anything.
The vendor girl still has the other arm of the brother, the wife yells at her, to what I can only assume is to the effect of “let go.” She doesn’t. The wife them swats the arm of the other girl and all hell breaks loose.
The other girls working there start to yell push and a girl fight ensues. I luckily saw the whole thing and got in between them before the hair pulling started. Chinese girls are like fire when you mess with their family. If I had one piece of advice about Chinese girls it’s this: Never, never piss of a Chinese girl pertaining to her family.
So fists are flying through the air, hitting nothing, legs are kicking hitting nothing, a crowd gathers, the cannons are all lined up from some epic war or something.
The wife’s mother comes over and starts to try to land some punches. Myself and dad are in between all the girls. Calculators are being thrown, cussing, and all kinds of things are being said.
Finally we started to move away from the booth and down a hall when someone says something and another calculator is Nolan Ryaned threw the air. And stoked the fire.
All said and done, we finally left the floor and headed upstairs. I was told that this was the first time that anyone had seen anything like this.
Lessons learned: Beijing clothing markets can be very aggressive. They also have an ungodly amount of calculators on hand for calculation and throwing at people. Try not to toy with the vendors. We didn’t. But I can see if you got them down to nothing on a price and then decided that you didn’t want it, well, that would really piss them off. Although it’s fun. I think acting not interesting really pissing them off. Again, lot’s of fun.
Anywho, it’s a cool story. Nothing like making memories for visiting families. Just let a homie leave the store and we don’t have a beef.
Good times.