Learning Chinese

Learning was the last thing on my mind! I thought I was done, but living in China is not easy without knowing the language. I know we have all heard that the Chinese are all learning English, some 300 million of them, but let me assure you it does not include EVERYONE.  There are about a BILLION that are not.  I constantly struggle at supermarkets, with taxi drivers, restaurants…basically for most things in everyday life. So learning the language, I thought would prove extremely useful for me. And I took inspiration from my Indian friends in Beijing who not only speak Chinese but can also read it!  They make me want to try at least.

I’m sure by now we all have that uncle or neighbour or distant relative who does business in China. And most of us have even heard that its one of the toughest languages in the world! I completely agree. I am usually good with languages. But Chinese, is a wholly different ping-pong game altogether.

The difficulty in learning the language has mostly been my inability to unlearn what I know about languages in general. A lot of it does not make any sense when translated. The grammar is very different and sometimes non-existent. And not to mention different tones to words that are spelt the same in pinyin.

Then of course there is the slight matter of learning the language in Pinyin: this is the name given to the method of transcribing the Chinese characters into acceptable phonetics for Western learners. This system of learning became popular in the late 1950’s and is now widely accepted as the first step to learning Chinese. In fact, it also helps Chinese children learn pronunciation and the phonetic way of transliterating the characters. So most Chinese people know the character as well as its pinyin.

In pinyin the alphabets are in English with the respective tones: there are four tones in Chinese thus increasing the complexity of the language. I just have to learn to pronounce correctly depending on the tones and voila I will know Chinese. But to me it all sounds the same! For example, yí in 1^st tone means aunt, yī in 2^nd tone means one, yǐ in 3^rd tone means chair and yì in 4^th tone means hundred million. 

However, unlike other languages this is slightly easier to grasp because the grammar is simple and uncomplicated. There is only one form of the verb, which is so unlike English where we have is, as was, there, were… In Mandarin one verb does the job!  And the local Chinese folk are also very patient, so if you get the word right (without the tone, that is) the locals try and understand what you are saying. 

What I get asked frequently by my non-Chinese friends when I say am learning Chinese is, ‘so have you learnt the alphabets?’ There are no such things as alphabets in Chinese. Each word has a character and the average Chinese person knows about three thousand characters. Which is not much. Back in the day you were considered a scholar only if you knew about ten thousand characters.  And your handwriting or calligraphy had to be very good!

And here I am struggling to learn a few thousand words. My biggest hurdle has been memorising the words and their meaning. Memorising was never my forte.  But that’s the only way to learn. And learning pinyin is far easier than learning the characters as you have to memorise the characters and there are about 1400 basic characters. Think about it this way: you have to memorise 1400 diagrams!

Here is what takes the cake though. The Chinese have their own words for everything from names of countries, their currencies and even some world famous personalities. So much so a Chinese friend of mine argued with me that the fastest man on the planet is some freak called You Sai En Bo Er Te. Turns out, that is Usain Bolt’s Chinese name. Well at least in India, America is just Amrika or AAmaereeka depending on which part of India you come from. So for the Chinese, I am Yindu ren, from Xin Deli and our currency is the Lubi!    

Disappearing Act

If I could change my identity who would I be? J K Rowling? The money would be pretty damn good! Or Angelina Jolie? Six kids… hmm am not so sure. But in China I have met Justin Bieber, Jennifer Aniston and even Jackie Chan. 

The first time I noticed this phenomenon was with my real estate agent. The first day his name was Jackie and by the third day he says “call me Justin Bieber” and I just stared at him incredulously! I was like you know that you look nothing like Justin Bieber right? And he goes “no that’s ok, girls love Justin Bieber, so I just decided to change my name. I wish it were that easy. But in China it works. 

The influx of foreigners and their inability to pronounce Chinese names is what prompted this English names phenomenon. It makes it easier for Chinese to meet foreigners and foreigners to remember their names. This is most prominent among the low income and low middle class workers who by Chinese definition are the migrant workers that hold up the Chinese economic miracle. 

It is this set that recognises the value of learning English and how that can make a difference to a person’s career. So why Justin Bieber or Michael Jackson? There are two reasons. One, is the popularity of pop music in the average Chinese psyche and English songs are their first step to learning the language. So I’ve met Chinese who sing flawless songs in English right to the T, while their spoken English, less said about it, the better.

Migrant workers who flock to the cities usually want no reminders of their life back in their hometowns or villages. And by changing their names they find it easier to assimilate in the cities. They are all here to realize the Chinese dream. 

So why does this phenomenon deserve a mention? Because it is not that they get English names. It is how often they change their names. It’s how one day they are part of your world and the next they are just another person in milling crowds of these emerging cities.  Cities help them camouflage.  They make new friends, they change their numbers , they change their names and even their email and social networking ID’s.  And voila, they are who they want to be! It is like they never existed.

I have met some wonderful people in my one year here. Gone out, gotten drunk like a fish, sang avaaraa hooon mein with Chinese friends and their neighbours, shared food at common tables. But, a year later I have no idea where Kevin or Jackie or any of the others are or for that matter who they really are. One day they just disappeared! 

I have in my time here done a little research on why this happens and the reasons are many.

1.       It gives them an anonymity and helps them create an identity that would fit their career goals.

2.       You learn from your mistakes and then when you want to move on, the best way to do it is would be to get a new number. So your friends have no way to trace you. And you get a whole new start to life.

3.       Internet has become such an intrinsic part of their lives it helps them further live out their fantasies! The girls often put pictures of models or extremely photoshopped pictures of themselves to attract the elusive, perfect guy! The guys usually put up pictures of themselves in front of expensive cars.

4.      Microblogging allows them the anonymity to voice their opinion about issues in a tightly controlled media environment. And that too without revealing who you are.  ( Though recently  the authorities have clamped down on that by asking for real name registrations.)

5.       It also helps them lead multiple lives and one that does not intertwine. One for their parents and relatives back home and the other for themselves     

6.       The anonymity helps them change their fates, for better or for worse no one can tell.

Well, there are of course the legitimate reasons for changing names and these might not sound very surprising to us Indians;

1.       Usually fortune tellers will tell them that changing names will help them get married , get promoted and more importantly make lots of money(Wish they would qualify how much is lots of money  and how(il) legitimately you have to earn it!).

2.       Secondly, some of the names are ultra patriotic and can sound irrelevant today.

3.       Chinese by itself is a hard language to grasp and tones make up the language. And foreigners tend to butcher the Chinese names without of course realising it. I have called people pig, chicken and some other terrible things I would rather not say! And some names can also have unintended associations. And since Chinese is a tonal language, different tones can mean completely different things . 

 Fong Si-lung(literally translates to become the dragon) and Lei Siu-lung( literally translates to little dragon) are martial art actors most of us grew up watching or have at least heard of. We of course know them better as   Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee.  What’s in a name you say?

Beijing bites: Hotpots and chopsticks

The first thing people ask me when they know that I am based in China is about the food. The questions usually start with “is it anything like the Chinese food you get in India?” or “have you tasted snakes yet?” The answer to the first question is Chinese food in China is poles apart from Chinese food in India. It’s far better or worse depending on how adventurous you are willing to be. The for the answer to the second question read on! Also, unlike in India, in China, there’s no such thing as Scehzwan fried rice or Chicken Manchurian! 

There is of course Sichuan cuisine. The uniqueness in their food is the Sichuan peppercorn. It’s not spicy like our chilli but it numbs your tongue and you experience a tingling sensation. It is an acquired taste and not necessarily something I enjoy.  Sichuan is also known the food capital of China.  So it’s easy to fathom why hotpots from this region are pretty popular all over China. 

Hotpot refers to different varieties of stew that is usually brought in a simmering pot and kept onto an electric hotplate or induction plate at the center which is controlled by a knob. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, dumplings and seafood.

My introduction to the hotpot was actually accidental. It happened in the second week after our move to Beijing. As we were still waiting for our gas connection to be set up, we would end up eating out quite often. So our daily dinner plans always started out with a walk to find a place to eat and our criteria was simple. The menu had to be in English!  

We had overdosed on TGIF, Subway and other such Western joints. I love my rice and curry and decided to try the Chinese version of it. We very soon realised our criteria for an English menu was quite often a tedious task. On one such outing even after an hour we were finding it difficult to find a place to eat with food we recognised. Finally, just as we were about to give up and settle for another night at TGIF, we found a menu which had chicken, mutton and momo’s (dumplings). How difficult could it have gotten from there!  Well, for one we had a Chinese waitress who exhausted us with her ranting in Mandarin while we continued to gesture that we did not understand and finally picked from the pictures on the menu. A plate of mutton and dimsums. She tried to get us to pick a broth but we hardly understood what she and half a dozen of her colleagues who had by then collected around our table tried to tell us. 

They finally gave up and brought a broth of their choosing and the girl picked up my bowl and gestured me to follow her and pick from a large assortment of ingredients. I was not very sure what I was supposed to do with it but picked some of the ones I recognised anyway. The list is quite exhaustive  and includes garlic, coriander, spring onions, chilli garlic paste,  peanut paste, red and green chillis, soy sauce etc.   

By the time I came back to the table the dimsums were already there. There was only one problem, they were frozen!! How was I supposed to eat it? I had no idea and tried looking at other tables but did not quite understand. I figured maybe it was some sort of delicacy and even tried biting into it. But it was frozen solid! And I would have definitely broken a few teeth had I continued.  While we waited the mutton also arrived and surprise, surprise it was uncooked! By then even bread seemed like a wise option and I was reaching my “mummy...bhook lagi hain” moment! Armed with chopsticks. 

The waitress finally arrived with the pot filled with broth, poured it into a hole in our table, lit a fire under it and deftly put the dimsums and the mutton into the broth. While i sheepishly looked on! And voila, in about ten minutes she served up cooked mutton and dim sums in a soup bowl.  I can’t say I liked it as it was in the middle of summer and we had steam from the pot blowing into our face. The overall experience was not exactly worth remembering.

 But under duress from our friends here we were soon taken to experience it like it is supposed to be experienced.  They taught us how to order it and and what you do with the ingredients and how you eat it. Its just what the doctor ordered for the long winter in Beijing. I have of course grown very fond of it.

The experience of China lies in its food.  Mine were not the most pleasant ones to start with, but I still love Chinese food and I mean the food you get in China, not in Majnu ka Tila. Back home, I have tried to learn eating with a chopstick, and I fancied people who could. But I never imagined one day I would have to! Initially I tried asking for a spoon and fork and for a while even carried disposable ones in my bag! But after getting stared at for eating with soup spoons and ladles (‘coz that’s the only spoon they had) I was determined to master this skill. I mean how hard could it be? I practised at home and when I thought I had mastered it, took it to the streets (literally) and have I had bad chopstick days or what. It was a constant feature to have things flying off my chopsticks and I would just sheepishly say ‘I guess I am having a bad chopstick day’ . And on a good day, all I could manage was about five grains of rice on my chopstick!! 

So imagine my surprise when visiting one of the palace museums I saw a whole bunch of spoons and forks on display and am like ‘what! They had it then why can’t they have it now’?  I can’t help but quote Bill Bryson.  

“And I find chopsticks frankly distressing.  Am I alone in thinking it odd that a people ingenious enough to invent paper, gunpowder, kites and any number of other useful objects, and who have a noble history extending back 3,000 years haven't yet worked out that a pair of knitting needles is no way to capture food.”

I have learnt how to eat with chopsticks, eaten raw crab, maybe even eaten a bird which the restaurant claimed was chicken, cartilage on skewers, some weird greens, pickled chicken feet and stinky tofu . But snakes, not yet!     

Bears, babies and Beijing

As a favour to a friend I decided to fill in for a kindergarten job. So while I was talked through the basics of teaching children, it seemed easy enough. My job was to teach them English and I was assigned the youngest class of the lot. I figured I love children, so how difficult could it get? I just had to sing and teach them a few basic English words. That can’t be hard.

Anyway, I was shown around and given my teaching material and told to go ahead and teach. And I’m like “I’m not sure what you teach kindergarten”. So they‘re like “oh don’t worry, just do some action songs and play with them”. That sounded like fun till I entered the class. I could hear a whole lot of wailing and I was so hoping it was not my class but I had no such luck. So here I am handed a class of three year olds wailing their heart out and all I wanted to do was run the other way. And I was left thinking how do I teach them anything when they are all just crying.

I guess it didn’t help that I was brown skinned. I can’t blame them. They have probably not seen anyone darker than pale yellow! So the minute they saw me they wailed extra hard! And that did not buy me any brownie (no pun intended) points with the caretakers of that class.

If looks could kill, trust me between the caretakers and the children I sure would have been dead! I mean here they were trying to calm the kids down but the minute I walked anywhere near them they all just pointed fingers at me and cried. Yeah, I was the new female Gargamel in town! It was jus nine thirty and I was already looking forward to the end of the day. What made it even more difficult was the fact that I could not speak a word of Chinese. So how on God’s earth am I supposed to calm them? They didn’t like the way I looked and i couldn’t even soothe them in a language they understand. I understood helplessness to the fullest extent then! And the caretakers assigned to my class did not speak a word of English either. So there was no way of knowing if what I was doing was right or wrong.

My second class was slightly better, they were older children. So they were not wailing! I had a guide to take me through my first day and she taught me a song in the class and then I was expected to immediately memorize that and teach it to the kids. I just turned around and said “but I just heard you recite that to me like ten minutes back. I don’t even remember the words”. Not just teach, sing. Sing! Hmmm, nobody said nursery rhymes had to be melodious! And she turns around and says but don’t you know ‘one lil, two lil, three lil Indians’. (As an aside you could almost hear me say you bet I know a lot more than three Indians.) But I managed to keep a straight face. The last I was in a kindergarten was twenty-five years back! And for better or worse I was taught Jack and Jill went up the hill and twinkle twinkle little star.

There is a break at eleven. It’s lunch time for the children. And I watched the caretakers give them their lunch while the others were putting out their beds. I too just wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep. So after putting the children to bed, we went to have lunch during which I was taught a few more games for my afternoon classes.

I hate it when someone forces me to wake up, so imagine twenty, three year olds forced to wake up. Each one of them was crying for their mom! I could totally get it. I myself would have thrown a hissy fit. My sympathies were with them but how do you make them stop crying? I was at a total loss. This was definitely not my area of expertise. But give them some yoghurt and distract them and they were good to go.

While I am writing this bit, I need to mention my princess. She was the only one who gave me a chance. She watched me for a long time before she made her move. She had this air about her, a bit snooty, very well mannered. She sure was the boss in this class. As soon as she sized me up and decided it was better to be on my side the others felt slightly more comfortable. She would always stand right beside me no matter what and if I did not pay her any attention then she would demand it.  And her genetics were brilliant! She was so adorable, cute and gorgeous. Now I know why teachers back in school had pets. She had me floored. I was also allowed to give them English names. I had decided on Diana, yep after Princess Diana!

Of course I felt sorry for some of the children. They should not have been there from 9 -5. They were too young.  But what knocked my breath off was how everything was catered to their needs. Their toilets and wash basins hardly came up to my knee! I was so fascinated! You can’t blame me. I’ve never been inside a kindergarten in like two decades. Back in the day, it was not so cool!

So here are a few of my insights

1.       Kindergarten is a very expensive affair and so parents here are opting to have only one child even though that law has opened up enough to allow two single-child parents to have a second baby.

2.       The kids here have six people to spoil them silly and when they grow up they have six people to take care of.

3.       Most kids are picked up by their grand-parents/ aayis (ayahs) and they practise the 9-5 work week already and they are only three years old!

4.       They charge heavily claiming to be international schools who teach English but they have people from places like Albania teaching them. I mean the guy who hired me could hardly string one coherent sentence in English and he was teaching!

That said, I have heard some pretty scary tales of kindergartens where parents have been so mad at a teacher because one of the kids cut off a bit of hair of their child and the parent did not even realize until two days later. And when they did, they deemed it fit enough to throw hot water on the teacher’s face! There was also this parent who sent an unapproved driver to pick up the child from kindergarten and the teacher refused to send the child with that person. Later the parent came and went on an abusing spree till the teacher apologised! This in a country where kindergartens across were prone to killings last year.

But all said and done teaching was not my cup of tea, never was, but it’s always good to experiment new ways of spending your time in a whole new city.  Gives me some perspective. Anyway the one person who had the most amount of fun in all this was my husband. He could not wipe the smirk off his face while I was practising

‘Teddy bear, teddy bear turn around

Teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground...’

Chingapore

My thoughts this month are inspired by our trip to Singapore and the Chinese I saw there and the similarities and stark differences with their mainland cousins. So we landed in Singapore and caught a  cab to go to our friend’s house. And my heart skipped a beat when the taxi guy spoke flawless English! On our way we engaged him in a conversation and I was secretly jumping for joy and tearing at the same time. Yeah, that’s how deprived I am for English speaking people in Beijing. And I am not exaggerating, trust me!

Half way through the ride we were caught in this downpour and this am told is very common in Singapore. But I had not seen rain like this in a while. So, the happiness was flowing. Reminded me of Kerala. But it started to get a little irritating, when the darn rain refused to ebb till 11 AM. Damn it. Here I was half way across the South China Sea and cooped at home. We bought our selves an umbrella and made our way to the metro station. Our only stop over was a breakfast place for DOSA!! This time I think my tummy was doing the victory dance! After seaweed, corn and conjee as breakfast options this sure was a welcome change.

And our Singapore exploration started with Little India. Did I forget to mention I was missing India? You must’ve figured it out by now. And the first place I went to was a parlour. I have renewed respect and love for our Indian parlour ladies. They kick ass! She made my caterpillar like eyebrows look gorgeous but not without asking why it looked the way it did. 



But here’s the thing, from all of what I saw and experienced of Little India, I think it should be called Little Chennai or Little Pondy bazaar. From Ilaiyaraja songs to malli poo( jasmine flowers) it was all there. The colour and the chaos. This was the only place, repeat, only place in Singapore where you could cross the road as you pleased and not get fined for jaywalking. Some habits do die hard.

 



But what I loved best was the fact that I could communicate with anybody on the street. And Singapore is 70% ethnically Chinese so you’re never too far away to miss the Mandarin. But the interesting bit about it was that they spoke like how the Indians speak their languages, by substituting English words in between most of their conversation

 

But by the second day, I was able to find uncountable similarities between the Sing Chinese and their PRC cousins. They all had difficulty in following what you would say if it had too many articles and prepositions. They all had the same haircuts! And, they’re all as I-phone obsessed as the mainlanders!



And you can easily tell the difference between an ethnic Chinese Singaporean and the newly arrived mainland Chinese when they start talking to each other. They don’t quite get each other’s accents. There was this instance in a bus I took in Singapore where the air-conditioning was not working and so this Chinese guy tried dissuading a lady from getting onto the bus by telling her in Chinese that the air-con was not working. But she did not understand a word of what he said and replied back in Chinese to that effect. By now, I catch bits and pieces of Chinese. But when the driver told her in English, she understood. Maybe it’s a bit like my Hindi, incomprehensible to anyone but the South-Indians!

 

And then you speak to the Singaporeans they will tell you that even the Chinese Singaporeans look down upon newly arrived Mainlanders.  And the complaints range from their loud behaviour and complete lack of self restraint when it comes to standing in a queue or just overall unruliness. Of course, there’s also their absolute lack of English language skills!



But to be fair it happens to most immigrants. The disowning by their own. Almost as if to feel distanced from what they too once were. Wonder what will happen to us? Global nomads.

 

This blog however seems incomplete if I don’t mention the reason for our trip to Singapore. We went to watch the Singapore Grand Prix. It should be on everybody’s list of things to do before you die! It doesn’t matter if you follow the sport or not. The sound of the cars whizzing by, the atmosphere, the concerts...all of it is to die for! And am told by the organisers that this is the best Grand Prix in all of Asia. A night race and a street race with lots of beer.  What more can u ask for? 







Crooning with a K

KTV as an entertainment phenomenon gives Ekta Kapoor’s K-serials a run for their money. And no, KTV is not a television channel (naive as it may seem, Kalanidhi Maran hasn’t spread his wings to China yet and Rajinikanth hasn’t taken over either!) According to Wikipedia it’s Karaoke TV and has its origins in Japan. 

 The Chinese are obsessed with KTV’s .  And for lack of creativity, all of them are called KTV. It’s like adding ‘Bar & Restaurant’ to most eat out joints in Kerala. My favourite one being the Gaylord’s Bar and Restaurant. I suppose it would be imperative to my Mallu brethren to know whether it serves alcohol or not!

 Melody KTV is one of the most popular in Beijing.  Well there is a reason why my Chinese friends did not take me there. My singing is far from melodious!  So I had to be content with Uranus KTV. Not that it made a difference to me. I was after all going to a karaoke bar that was playing Chinese music, so the cheaper the better, I thought.  Well to add to my disbelief, they actually did play English music and I was asked to, no, forced to sing. The crowd favourite was” Everybody” by Backstreet Boys. The last time I heard it was in high school.

After the first couple of lines my friends decided to put themselves out of their misery and asked for the mike to be passed on.  Serves them right for not heeding to my husband’s advice on my disastrous singing skills!

But KTV as a phenomenon is fascinating not because I have not witnessed such a thing in India. But because of the sheer size and scale and even opulence of some of these operations! They are restaurants, bars, pimping joints and family hangouts all rolled into one. And they are open for business till about 7 in the morning.  

What often renders me speechless is the sheer size of these things. They usually cover about three or four floors and have these massive chandeliers that are probably as expensive as the real estate itself. These places are then divided into smaller rooms and you pay for a room depending on the size of your group. Some of these rooms are bigger than whole houses in Mumbai!

These huge buildings with multi-coloured neon lights are hard to miss.  Beijing’s full of them. Some of these places remind you of Paharganj in the night, especially the tacky neon lights and obvious underground illegal activities.  Some places have these huge LED display screens at their reception which is usually displaying these tacky, hypnotic patterns that annoy me no end. It’s like Pink Floyd meets Annu Mallik. So you walk into a KTV and pay for a sound-proof room which usually consists of a 40 -50 inch LCD screen and a two large sofas and a table and a funky touch-screen console which lets you play your songs.

And singing is the not the only thing that happens in these places. Some of them are known to be just fronts for high profile pimping. Of course, if you are with a mixed gender group then you are unlikely to ask for these services. But even the high profile ones have girls on hire. They sing with you, flirt with you and for a few hundred yuan more, are willing to oblige even more. So boys, if you are on a trip to China ALONE, you know what to do. There are also two kinds of KTVs. Ones which you can take your girlfriend to and ones you won’t! I guess sound proofed private rooms have their benefits.

As for us, we picked our poison and sang the night way. A couple of beers down my singing voice came out. Though I doubt I’ll get invited for karaoke again! Ever.

Dog and the bone

     Shopping in local markets in China is quite a delight. Most of the so-called local markets are actually these huge air-conditioned multi-storeyed buildings, not like the crowded and dingy by-lanes of Janpath or Sarojini.  And they’re organised floor wise. So you have an entire 40 or 50 thousand square feet of just bags, shoes, clothes and other trinkets! What more can a shopper ask for? The one thing that’s common with markets back home is the colour and noise, with the collections nicely displayed to tempt an avid shopper like me.

But here is the cool part! Guys enjoy shopping here more! Surprise, surprise! The pretty Chinese sales girls are usually all over them, touching them, holding their hand and coaxing them to buy wares from their store.  Have to mention, it’s a definite plus if you are white and blue eyed! Infact it’s common to see sales girls hold your hand and guide you into their store. And boy, it’s a pretty strong hold. So much so, my first instinct when grabbed like that was to get angry and defensive. I guess after all these years of having lived in India and being grilled to be defensive if anyone as much as touches you, this comes as no surprise! It took a little getting used to smile politely and walk into the store till they loosen their grip and then I just flee for dear life!

An incident I witnessed while waiting for my husband and a friend to finish haggling over half a dozen shoes deserves a special mention. There was this white guy and his mom trying to buy shoes from the store right next to where we were buying from and the girl was fawning over him so much that if I were his mother, I would have been quite embarrassed. But to be fair, he was encouraging it in the hope of more discounts, I suppose. Letting a girl feel you up is a small price to pay, if it is one at all!   

A definite plus is the fact some of the best English speaking Chinese are in these markets. Here’s the weird part. You could walk into a real Louis Vuitton store and the sales girl wouldn’t know English, but walk into one that sells fakes, and the Queen’s English comes rattling out. I remember going into a high-end store to buy my husband a suit and we spent close to an hour trying to tell them that they need to make alterations. My husband and I tried our very best to make them understand in our broken Chinese English and not to mention a liberal use of charades. Finally we gave up and politely smiled and walked out while all four of the sales staff there breathed a sigh of relief. The only good thing to come out of all this: try beating us at dumb charades now!

But the best part of the shopping is yet to come, the thandav between the Indian and the Chinese. And to quote a prominent Chinese businessman it’s not a question of who is able to outsmart the other, but simply which one will give up in absolute frustration!! And after moving to China this is the only place I have seen the so called India-China rivalry. Otherwise I don’t think the Chinese particularly care!

The difference between the bargaining in India and China is that here they start their negotiation at astronomical prices.  For example in Janpath if you want a top which you think is no more than a hundred bucks worth, where will the shopkeeper start? 500, 1000, mebbe even 1500? Here in China it starts at something like 1800 yuan that is 12500 Indian rupees. You must be kidding me! You can buy whole of Palika Bazar for that kind of money! So yeah we finally end up paying like 30 yuan, but of course if you were American or British i guess 400-500 will sound like a good deal to you.

Moreover, if you can’t afford the Coach bags and Jimmy Choos just yet, the Chinese markets are there for your rescue. They make the best quality fakes I have ever seen. Even light them on fire to show you how good their quality is. But they don’t always put them on display, its usually hidden in their backrooms. But if you get chatty you can definitely find whatever you are looking for. I have to add they are bloody good at faking things.       

On one such visit to these markets we were shown fake i phones and the shopkeeper was proudly displaying the “Chinese i-phone 4”   as opposed to the Apple i-phone 4! He even had four different qualities of the i-phone 4.  And you could actually tell the quality difference, the most expensive being the very best. But, it’s still a steal compared to how much you have to shell out for a real I-phone. And also I-phones are a huge status symbol in China, so fake or real you need to seen to be owning an I-phone and not to forget drive a fancy car and own a nice apartment. That’s your ticket to China! Huānyíng nín dào zhōngguó!