China Day 4~ Shopping Day

There is plenty of shopping to be done in Beijing.  We thankfully have a friend who lived in Beijing for 10 years so we contacted him before leaving to get some suggestions... it just so happens that he used to work at a pearl store.... bonus!  He gave us the name of the store owner and then contacted her to let her know we were coming so we would get whole sale prices from her without barganing.

Barganing, there is a fun activity you can expect to pay 25% or less of thier original asking price, it helped that my boys spoke Chinese with the sales people. 

This is the first day that we were on our own and needed a taxi, the other days we walked when we were on our own, taking a taxi is so much more difficult than walking as it involves communication with the driver.

We went to the Pearl market... the bell boy at the hotel got us a taxi, talked to the driver and told us not to worry the driver would take us there.  We obtained a card from the hotel to give to our return taxi so they would know where to take us.

We did arrive at the Pearl Market:

And we did find our pearl shop that we were given information on, and yes we did buy some pearls.

We did not take many pictures at all this day as the mall was busy and we felt it was not too wise to pull out our camera.

The lower part of the mall is a huge electronics area, they have everything but be careful as most things are fake. In China they copy stuff, like, for instance, an iPad, they make something that looks like an iPad but isn't really and then they sell it "cheap."  In fact we were offered an iPad 3!  Ummm they have not even been released yet.....

As a family we decided to not buy anything that was fake as we felt that the sellers are stealing from the companies that make this stuff.  Coach bags, Nike shoes, North Face coats etc..... can all be bought but none of them are real. 

We met up with another friend the last night we were in Beijing for dinner, he just published his first book of which we will tell  you about later, but he said that  China will be the very last market that his book is realeased to and that they will wait as long as possible to release it in China.  China is a huge market but as soon as his book is released you will be able to find copies of his book not from his publisher in places like the Pearl Market and the Silk Market.

We have a few different friends that are artist in various forms and they work really hard to produce a painting, an illustration, a book, a song, we feel that they should be compensated for their work and that the materials should not be able to be copied and sold for "cheap."


After the Pearl Market we were able to easily get a taxi as they sort of line up in the area waiting for tourists to be done shopping.  We got back to our hotel without a problem.

We were told before going to China to be careful about what you say, "they" are listening and watching everything. 

We learned that if it says free wifi in China, like at Starbucks or the Airport, you must put in a Chinese phone number in order to get access to the internet this is because they monitor EVERYTHING.  You can not just log in or connect our device like you can in the U.S.  you must put some identifying information into the system.

Our tour guide had no idea what you-tube is, facebook is blocked in China and we had very limited access to google.

We were invited to a church by a certain person...... that we know :)  but in order to enter that church you must show your passport as only people not from China may enter.  In China and they will not allow their citizens to enter a Christian church unless it is registered and controlled by the government.

After our day of shopping we rested at the hotel before heading out for some dinner.  A friend in Singapore reccomended Tim's BBQ.

Texas in China!  The food was good the atmosphere fun and relaxing, exactly what we needed.  We had a wonderful dinner, we were full and content and ready to go home.

It was at this point that our good day of being out and about on our own turned not so good.  We needed to get a taxi in order to get home, it was 6:30 that means it was rush hour.  Being that we are not from the area we were unsure where to get a taxi so we thought about areas that would work in Singapore and stood in those areas for 45 minutes we tried to get a taxi.  Suddenly we saw one, Scott flagged it down, the taxi pulled up to the curb and WHAM  a group of four Chinese people ran in front of us and took the taxi!!  To say the least we were not pleased, at all, some of us less pleased than others.  How frustrating to have spent 45 minutes in the cold to have the rudeness of someone taking the taxi,  but this is the culture, there is definately a me first get out of my way or I will push you out of my way mentality.  Our family experiences this in Singapore with certain populations too so it was not too surprising just frustrating.

In Singapore the restaraunt can call a taxi for you so we went back to Tims BBQ and asked them how to get a taxi, they told us that it is really hard this time of night and showed us a place they thought would be good to stand at but they did not offer to call a taxi for us.

We decided to walk out of the busy area and down a quiet street to see if we would have any better luck.  We were getting offers from bikes, from private drivers claiming to be taxi drivers, one taxi even stopped and refused us, several empty taxis drove right by us waving their hand at us.  As you can imagine we were done, we just needed to get back to the hotel and we felt a little helpless in the whole situation.

Finally after walking several blocks down a very quiet street we were able to get a taxi to stop and take us to our hotel.