Mike gambles for electronic goods

Bought a camera last week. If you know anything about China's consumer electronics market, you'll know this was a potentially disastrous move. Beijing's electronics markets cover every shade of gray, from the perfectly legitimate to the absolutely illegal. I can tell you now that I am 99% sure my mission was a success, I am now the proud owner of what is almost certainly a Sony CyberShot DSC-T99C.

Some context: in my preparations to go to China, my camera was something of an afterthought (as were most things, I guess). When I was packing, I discovered that my old camera was entirely uncooperative (it seemed to want to do nothing but reminisce on old photographs, entirely unwilling to change settings and make new ones). I was also about to go to the Great Wall, so it seemed like a reasonable to to get one.

I bought my camera in Zhongguancun, the nearby electronics district (I originally planned to go out to Wukesong Camera City, but one of the program professors advised against it due to the bait-and-switch tactics employed there). So I walked into the Dinghao electronics building (pictured below) expecting a fairly similar experience to the other shopping malls I've seen in China - smaller, more vertical, more specialized versions of American malls. This was not Dinghao. In Dinghao, people rent out a single stall that is maybe 15-20 square feet and specialize in one good (often in one brand). This makes finding what you want extremely difficult, as various stores seem to aim to be as far from their competition as possible, with the exception of computer part vendors in the basement who all seemed rather tech-savvy and probably got along quite well (I may be reading too much into this organization scheme, but the camera shops seemed few and far between).

Eventually, I made my way to a larger camera store (about the size of my down room) on an upper level which carried one of the models I was looking for. I suspect I paid a slight premium for buying from an actual, enclosed (if informal by American standards) store, but I wanted to be able to concentrate while I carried out this operation. I ask one of the half-dozen people mulling to set a price to my desired camera, and after conferring with a compatriot, he tells me it is 2050元 ($306). I reply that I saw the same camera on the internet for 1780元 ($266) (a classic bartering technique (though in this case, I wasn't lying, I just my research)). He makes a quick phone call, turns to me smiling, and we have this disastrous conversation (translated from Chinese):

Him: Black or green? (cleverly implying that he has accepted my price without explicitly admitting my victory)
Me: Black or green?
Him: Right, black or green.
Me: Black or green... Black or green means what?
He becomes flustered, thinks for a second, and - in English - yells: BLACK!

I understand, and ask for the black one. I revert to mostly pantomiming for the rest of out conversation, until another of the mulling-abouters start asking me question about my Chinese studies, which I mostly failed to answer in my flustered state. She also (I think) joked with the other people sitting about about foreigners and their fondness for the verb一verb construction (ex. 看一看 or kan yi kan, meaning 'to have a quick look' as opposed to 'to look'). She conspicuously did not compliment me on my Chinese, which was refreshingly honest of her (the other day a man complimented me on my Chinese after I merely asked him how much the popsicle I was holding cost - the Chinese are usually eager to compliment you on learning their language). All the meanwhile, the man handling my camera was showing me how it worked, applying a protective film to the screen, showing me the original battery and charger were still in the box, etc. When the time came to pay, the man wrote on something check-shaped and handed it to me. I proceeded to spend several minutes asking (in Chinese), "Do I have to write anything on this?". He attempted and explanation a couple times until we became mutually frustrated and I decided to ignore the mystery paper. I handed him 1800元 in cash and he handed me my 20元 change, wrote something on the paper, put it in my bag with the camera (so apparently I was dealing with a receipt here). At this point I went on my merry way.

So all in all -  a while lot of confusion, embarrassment, and a 270元 ($40) discount on a almost certainly real camera. Not bad.