Please Come Buy!

The other day Lincoln and I visited a spot on Beijing called the Hilong Electronics City.  4 buildings 5-6 floors each solid withe gadgets, computers, video games, etc.  Anything you can think of electronically they have.  We stepped in the building and were immediately swarmed due to the glaring realization that we were the only non-Chinese people in the entire place.  Sir, come see, come look at my iphone, come look at my laptop, we have acer, we have sony camera, how much you want to pay, what do you want to buy.  Its this constant barrage of the same question over and over again.  Its as if they work together to beat you down with offers to the point your mentally exhausted, give in and make a silly purchase.  That's why its always smart to go with a friend.  Just the moment you might give in, they are their to say, no way mate, that's a terrible price.  I may never know how all these vendors stay in business.  There are so many people selling the same thing, at roughly the same price, to people for the most part who can't afford it.  That's why they were so primed on selling to us.  To give you some perspective this would be like going to your biggest mall in town, and every shop in it, selling roughly the same merchandise at similar prices.  I don't know how it works!  20 million people in the city is a lot, but there are many places you can buy this stuff.  We are wondering if this system is ultimately supported by the government, so they can afford to employ people to do this despite the obvious competition hazards.  

Besides seeing a whole lot of products that I haven't seen before in the U.S., I finally got to eat at a Beijing McDonalds.  That burger tasted so good.  It was really crowded, but they had a lady who spoke some English helping to take orders then, she would give you a ticket and they would quickly process it at the register.  That had most of the same items as the US, a little more limited, and nothing really different or unusual except for the drink options.  You could get this coolaid like flavored drink with a dollop of softserve ice cream on top.  Lincoln and I each tried one and it could easily make a run in the US!  Quite tasty.  The lady who took our order also helped us to find the one open table in the place.  Great customer service!  The bathroom was also interesting.  There were men's and women's toilets, but the sinks were all outside in a shared common area.  I'd never seen that before. 

All said and done from our experience Lincoln bought a mini memory card and I bought a usb memory card, both for ridiculously low prices.  And they both work.  

Update on the traffic and smog.  We can definitely tell they yanked a bunch of cars off the roads, and the air is already looking a little better.  We certainly appreciate the traffic load being less, because it allows our taxi to get to and from work much easier now.  Any day the subway line to the Olympic green is supposed to open up, which will allow us to cut out the taxi altogether, unless we're going to visit some place.