My Experiences at Han City; the Shanghai "Fake" Market

One of the most interesting things about having a job where you get to travel to strange places, is the fact that you get some crazy stories. This is a re-post of one of my favourite stories from when I travelled to Shanghai for a LiVefire in 2013.

Prior to travelling to China, I had always heard of the Knockoff or "fake" Markets that people went to.  It was not until I was in Shanghai, that I decided (with some of my colleagues) to give it a go, if only for the experience. It is a bit of a long read, but I wanted to get the actual crazy nature of the experience down.

Before we went though, we decided that we should research it. On google we found several reviews, and several different markets that could go to. The two main ones seemed to be:

• Han City in Nanjing Xi Lu( 580 Nanjing Xi Lu, near Chengdu Bei Lu 南京西路580号, 近成都北路)
• Shanghai Science and Technology Museum Basement (apparently one of the largest)

We decided to go to Han City, as it was the closest to our hotel. I also noted the advice that every single website or review that I saw, said that it was all about bargaining. Mainly that you should start bargaining around 10% of their initial price and not pay over 20%.  Also that if the store keeper is adamant that their "lowest" price is the one they are giving...it's not...all you need to do is walk away and they normally will come running saying that your lower price is OK. In addition, they said that everyone spoke perfect English, which from my experiences in both Beijing and Shanghai is definitely not normal. Trying to get around is very challenging because even the taxi drivers don't read or speak English generally. Thus you always need a taxi card from the hotel, but I digress.

All of that being said I was astounded because I thought that bartering would be knocking like 25% off the price...not 80 to 90%. It also doesn't help that I am not the best at negotiating this type of thing. I was sure though to mention this to my colleagues so that they were aware of what to expect. I don't think however, that anything could have prepared us.

Suffice to say, we got a cab to the entrance to Han City. At first it is strange because it really looks like a normal mall. It is the first 4 floors of the building that is a pretty big size, and has a multitude of people going up and down the escalators. It is all fake stuff though....hundreds of "stores" which are small, a few metres across a few metres deep. You could buy everything from "brand" name clothes (including an inordinate number of places selling different brand name underwear...it seemed like every second store there was selling boxers or little tiny thongs...) to electronics, to luggage, to expensive watches, to DVDs, pretty much anything that you can think of.

So...we started off by doing the logical thing and walking in the front door. We didn't get 5 feet through the door and to a store, before we were approached by this 4.5 foot tall girl in her 30s that said to us: "What you looking for? What you want? You want watches? You want Hand Bags?" To which one of my colleagues said "Yes". She asked us to follow her.

Now, I can tell you that I was expecting to be pulled into a store, and we would haggle. This was not the case however, she took us up the second floor escalator and into a side hallway towards an elevator. Now, it would have not been as shady if the elevator would not have been the freight elevator for the facility, and right by the loading docks. At this point I was starting to freak about a bit. My colleagues were in much the same state of mind, and she could see that we were nervous.

She addressed this by saying, "We go to my store, it upstairs, good price". She continued to explain that they have better quality materials and it is less likely to be raided by the police because it was not downstairs (In very broken English). So reluctantly we continued to follow her into the elevator and up to one of the upper floors of the building.

I looked to my colleagues, (who are all bigger guys) and we could tell that we were all thinking the same thing...that if anything happened that the four of us could get out of there based on our size. So we exit the elevator and we are in this hallway with a ton of doors, it was very matrix-esque (only not clean and brilliantly white, but a little dirty and it dingy). We walk for a minute or so around a few corners and she punches a code by one of the doors to get inside the room.

We enter into the room, and there is shelves upon shelves of "real" designer bags, and a room full of "real" designer watches. My Fiance had said she wanted a specific brand of bag. So I started there while my colleagues went to look at some "real" Rolex, TAG, Omega, and many other watches. After looking through the bags in the racks (full of "real" Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and several other brands) I asked if she had any Fendi Bags. She said No, and I proceeded to say that it was unfortunate as that was what I was looking for. I walked towards the watch area, and she said "I find, I find" and immediately got on her cell phone talking a mile a minute in Mandarin.

I started to look at the watches as I thought that it would be interesting to see what I could find there. Not 5 minutes later, she comes and pulls me back towards the bags, and had a selection of three or for different Fendi bags. I looked at them and selected one that was interesting. and asked how much, knowing full well that I was not going to pay a stupid amount of money for something that although looked nice, was definitely not real.

"$4800 Yuan." (approx. $825 CDN) to which I scoffed, and offered a whopping $300 Yuan (approx $50 CAD) in return. All of this was done, silently on a calculator that she pulled out to tell me the price. the second offer was 1200 Yuan. No I don't know about you but a 75% reduction in price on the first exchange absolutely blew my mind. It also made me wonder if people would actually pay that as they made no attempt to claim that it was actually real. It was always quite clear that it was completely fake. But.. "VERY HIGH VERY GOOD QUALITY!!!"

This continued for 10 minutes me going up to a whopping 400 Yuan ($15 CAD more) and her coming down to 800 yuan. At which point I made a point to make a move to walk away to the walk room where my colleagues were still looking at watches. Immediately she came down to 500 Yuan and I said that I had to think on it still. I went and stood by my colleagues looking at the watches, and she kept pressuring me for it. I finally said, that 400 was my final price as I didn't have a crazy amount of money on me. Still pressure, she came down another $50 yuan. I continued to play hard ball and said that this was all i had to spend. Finally at long last, she said "Fine." and I passed over the money and was the proud owner of a hand bag, that i got for whooping 8% of the original asking price. I am also more than sure that I probably over paid...but for less than $70 CAD, it is not a bad bag, even if it is "real".

Finally with her off my back and my bag in hand, I went to my colleagues and started looking at the "real" watches. After 20 minutes we had 4 watches picked out (two "Rolex", a "Tag" and an "Omega"). I was ready this time...the one colleague that I was in on the deal with however was a bit shocked when the first price he gave was 9800 Yuan (approx. $1860). After our first couple of low ball offers the price came down to 4800 yuan and we came up to $1350. The same haggling process went on for 20ish minutes or so and we got them down to $2000 Yuan. We didn't have that many Yuan on us, and we definitely didn't want to use a bank machine or our Visas....I mean we were in a sketchy building in China.  ;)

After a quick conversation between us in broken Spanish, French and German so as to get the point across between us so that they couldn't understand what we were saying. we agreed that we would go no higher. He insisted repeatedly, and we finally said no, and walked for the door, it instantly came down to 1450 Yuan. We still insisted and pulled the walk out of the "store" routine and started the trek back to the elevator... after 10 seconds we hear him yell... "OK OK YOU PRICE YOU PRICE" We counted our existing Yuan and we were short, but the one guy had the money in US dollars. The guy offered us a divide by 6 exchange rate (definitely like a half dollar on the dollar in our benefit as the exchange rate is really 5.5) and we finally had our watches. Not bad for around 10% (after the exchange rate) of the original asking price.

All in all they were around $60 a watch, and even though they are "real" brand name watches, they are of higher quality than you would normally find in a watch for that price. We then proceeded downstairs and walked around the mall using the same tactics a few times to buy some other Nick knacks. We then left and went back to our hotel.

I must say that it was definitely a pretty crazy experience, and actually kind of invigorating. Both times we haggled we found that it gave a pretty crazy adrenaline rush. Also it left us feeling that we wondered what we actually COULD have got the items for. After all is said and done, I know that we probably could have got them for less, but we were still happy as it was an experience like no other.

I think the morale of the story is that yes we know it was probably a bit of a waste of money...so if you are not keen on spending a few hundred dollars to have a bit of fun than this is not for you. If however you are looking for a unique and fun experience of haggling and getting some decent items back in return, it is definitely worth the trip. Plus I now have a "real" Rolex, a "real" Omega, and a "real" Fendi Bag that I can admire. :)