Today, Kurt and I went to Honqiao (pronounced Hong chow) International Pearl City. We met my Sister-in-Law Deb and her very good friend Terri and had the opportunity to experience this famous market in Shanghai. . Pearl City is a building that contains three floors and on those three floors are merchants ranging from clothing, to golf clubs, to pens, purses, watches as well as a whole floor of pearls. Walking in to the place, you are greeted by people coming out to you saying things like “Come look at my stuff……….I will give you very good price.” Half of the fun is in the negotiation!!! (Let me remind all of you, that I do not have an export license and there are limitations to what I can bring with me!!! ) They will always start high and you must always start low. But, never negotiate if you are not planning on buying. To do so, causes the vendor to lose face and this is a very serious thing here. Based on the suggestion and guidance of Deb and Terri, I have decided that there is one very good Pearl Vendor and her name is Vicki. The name of her business is “Vicki Pearl” Vicki had lots of questions, wondering if there are Pearl Markets in America like this one. I told her no and that this is an amazing place to shop. As you can see in this picture, she is actually stringing a set of pearls for someone. You can get freshwater and saltwater pearls, as well as shell composites. Vicki has two types of quality that she works with; there is “good quality” and there is “best quality”, she measures the quality based on the shine, smoothness and shape. The string that she is working on here is “Best Quality”. All for now, time to do the laundry. The washer is quite a bit different than mine in the US and the instructions are in Chinese. I will figure it out though!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment