Fools, Money, and Lessons in Negotiation: A Trip to the Beijing Silk Market (Cameron)

The global economy is 64 trillion dollars.

In 7.6 billion years, the sun will have run out of hydrogen to fuse, and will have consequently expanded dramatically. The earth's orbit will be decayed due to tidal drag. The combination of these effects will cause the earth to be enveloped by the sun.

The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that the entropy of the universe will continuously increase, reducing the amount of usable energy available until no life is even theoretically possible.

So really, what's RMB 1800 ($276 CAD) in the grand scheme of things?

A large sign proudly proclaims that the Beijing Silk Market is "The most visited market in Beijing by foreigners!" This is not necessarily a good thing (from a foreigner's perspective). At this point I'm relatively sure there is no actual silk in the Silk Market, and the only thing that's even remotely silky is the silky smooth bargaining skills of the sales girls.

The primary negotiating tactic is displaying a wide range of emotions. My favourite is the profound shock when you first name your price (never more than 15% of the price they start with); it's like you just threw their dog off a building. (Lots of people have small dogs as pets, but according to the China Daily US Edition, dog theft is a growing problem. Dogs are expensive to raise, so restaurants buy stolen ones.)

As Andrew mentioned, we did end up buying suits. In our defense, out of all the people who get ripped off buying a suit, we must have been on the low end ($92 each). It would have been better if we got mascot costumes, which judging from the colorful feathers which unintentionally festooned our completed suits, must have been the primary expertise of the manufacturing facility (which I've dubbed Rumplestilknskinland).

During the negotiations we were keenly aware of reservation price and anchoring issues, and I learned from Andrew the "bargain up quantity, not down price" technique, which he used to great success on a non-suit purchase. But as Andrew noted, information asymmetry was our undoing.

We're planning on wearing them while attempting to sneak onto the first class car when we cross Siberia, so it's not a total loss.