Jibby Jades and Jewellery

Happening of events:

1. We went into this underground jewellery place. With lots of jewellery, jades, precious stones, and rings.
2. We sat down in a room and an ordinary sales person came to talk to us.
3. About 3 minutes into talking with, the sales person suddenly 'receives' a message from his ear piece/outside and says: "what the boss is here??"
4. He hurries out, and a 'boss' comes in, and start speaking loudly and acting boss.
5. The boss starts telling us about these things:
- how it is destiny that we meet, because
- this is only his 3rd time here in 20 years of operation, as he has 200 stores across China
- but unfortunately, his son is having some health issues, and he even chose to be here with us
- he starts to give out some small jades, as a gift, his rationale was,
- he hopes that we can give his son blessing, when we receive the jades

Boss Lin thanks us for blessing his son

- he says he will not sell us anything, he will not do business with us today, otherwise he is not our friend!
6. We proceed outside and he shows us how to tell real jade from fake jade. He says wrapping a piece of hair around a real jade, will disallow it from burning when fire is put against the hair. He tested, and it was true!
7. He then reveals the 'secret' of all secrets of the price markup, which was approximately 3 times higher than cost price. He says he applies this for all his items.
8. Then he says, "These jades are all very expensive (some were marked CNY190,000 = USD$31,000), BUT because he is now our friend, he will give it to us at USD$1,000 with no room to bargain, because if we bargain, he will not be happy and no longer wants to be our friend. He says this is the king of all bargains.
9. Next, 7 aunties rush up to claim the jade. Face palm from some of us non-aunties.
10. My mum picked one and showed it to my dad. My dad looks hesitant...and just at the point of hesitancy, the boss appears and says: "Ok, because you are my friend, please take this gift from me - it is a ring I have worn everyday for 20 years, please take it." Then he takes it off his hand and forces it on to my dad's hand.
11. I go to see what was going on. The boss suddenly appears and takes off the other ring on his hand, and says: "OK this ring I have been wearing for 15 years. Take it. You are my friend." Unbelievable! I took it. It looked expensive, but it didn't look good on me. And unbelievable! Boss's 35 years of ring-wearing given away in just 30 seconds! Truly not-believable.

Boss talks abour rings

12. Then when he sees another lady hesitating about the purchase, he goes up to the sales man, and says: "You! What are you doing?? She is my friend. Give her half price now." The sales man says sorry sorry and bows, and offers the lady the new price on the calculator.

This was exactly what I paid for. Live Chinese drama.

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Check out this flight ticket:


This means, if you pay AUD$300 for a flight, and they will donate 1/20,000 of it to charity!

Priorities

There comes a time in life, when gaining weight isn't as bad as a lot of other things in life. So 'negate gaining weight' on the priorities list becomes lower and lower.

This may or may not be such a bad thing, depending on what is on top of that priorities list.

New Years Eve What To Do?

Ask Google. Or Google insight.


And the result we get is:


1. Question asked in December - expected.
2. Growing interest over time for this question - unexpected. (Oh by the way, this is not because more people are using Google. The data is standardized.)
3. Australia, being the most interested country to ask this question on Google - unexpected.

Conclusion:

I moderately conclude that the richest countries will be the most interested in what they should do for NYE. I weakly conclude that Australia is among the richest countries in the world, and the reason they are asking this question is because 1. they have sufficient time, 2. they are used to a playful lifestyle, 3. they have sufficient spend.

Linking this back to China, you won't see many searches in baidu.com on what they should do for new years eve. No doubt, everyone is rushing to go back home to spend 15 new year days with the family.

Few observations

1. I was intrigued to find almost nobody reading on the train from Chengdu to Beijing. There were people on mobile phones, listening to music that's played out loud, which is a very acceptable practice, sleeping, watching tv, but didn't see any books!

2. In Sichuan province, people answer the phone by saying: "Wei4", which is pronounced 'Way', not 'Way?' Anyone in Asia not from Sichuan province may find that rude.

3. Everytime I presented my passport at a net cafe, 5-6 people would crowd around me and say simultaneously: "what is that? what is that?" Sometimes they will come talk to me like a foreigner, except as a foreigner with black hair.

4. Strange animals such as camels sometimes can appear in the modern streets of Shi Jia Zhuang.

5. Police crackdown on churches is funny. If you get caught meeting as a church, you say, OK 'this church' won't meet again. Then you change the name of the church, and keep meeting somewhere else. The junior police who 'caught' the church, then won't be responsible. When the senior officers crackdown on the junior police, the junior police can say: "Surely we have disunited this church meeting, see it no longer exists."

6. I like to pretend to take a photo of the taxi's license card while on the journey. Taxi drivers however, like to hide that license card behind something, or anything, such as a the 'available' lights, meter ticker or the rear view mirror! Dodgy.

7. Southern China flight attendants can't speak English. Not a complaint here. Sometimes the translation doesn't make any sense. Sometimes the translation into English is just a few words. Example: "所有不帶下的行李由海官除理" turns into: "All luggage not taken off the airplane will be handled by the customer".

Maid in China

For some reason, I was looking for a nanny in Sydney.

And check out the Google Ad that comes up! Haha.


Zoom in.


It's a maid who can also do some Chinese tutoring when she's done cleaning the house!

Not quite sure about the relevancy. Btw, the only Google that is accessible in China is google.com.hk .

Tour: Cute Small Girl

A good reason to go on tour with a group is not knowing WHO you will meet, which is an exciting feeling.




See the common factor?

This small girl is:
- 6 yrs old
- at the age of not being scared of big people
- shy at first, but once getting to know you she:
- likes sticking to people, especially big boys
- formulates intelligent responses
- lovely, cute and huggable (to my subjectivity)
- tells you stories
- prefers to hold hands, and thinks it ridiculous when teased by her brother (10 yrs old) that I'm her boyfriend. I also think it's ridiculous =].

Makes me want a daughter today! But wait, if something is truly great, it is surely worth the waiting for.

Watch (Out) For These Funny Things

1. If anyone tells/shows/asks you anything on the street, it would be best to ignore and run away, if you're not adventurous. Most Chinese people will ignore you and go away because they have all tasted the negativity of interacting with random people.

one example: occasionally, someone riding a motorbike will drop a bag of goods, or cash, and then ride off. Then, another person comes along behind you and says to you: "hey, we both saw the stuff drop off the motorbiker, so let's be fair about it and split?" When you say OK, he will start stuffing some of the goods into his bag and your bag, and just as you're about to leave, the motorbiker comes back with a few more guys and asks to check both your bags. When they find the stuff in your bag, they will threaten to beat you up/take you to police if you don't give them more money either via wallet or going to the bank to withdraw some.

2. The following scenario has been repeated many times, and it happened to us.

When we were about to leave a hotel in Shanghai, two suited businessmen + a driver pull into the hotel driveway and start talking to one of us. He brings out three beautifully wrapped bags of metal guanyin tea, and says: "Hey! You are really in luck, because we were just driving by and we have some teas here to give to our superior, but as he is unavailable, we need to get rid of it another way because we are going back to Huang Shan today. I bought these for 600 Yuan each, but today I will sell to you for 100 Yuan each." They sounded convincing (but dumb at the same time, but convincingly friendly), so one of us said, whatever it's 300 Yuan, let's purchase it. As soon as one of us handed over the money, another one of us came out screaming, and at the same time, he and his friend quickly hopped back into the car with a small 'oh thank you' and sped away. The another one of us said, "If he really wanted to be friends, why would he speed away as soon as I came out?"

Later on we asked a tea guru friend who said that this case has happened many times in China. When my mum said to him: "But these men were suited, had a driver, and even had a valid mobile number on the business card (she called to TALK to him as politely as possible, and he still confirmed over the phone it was excellent tea)", the guru said these people are in the trade of conning people, so of course they look professional. The estimated price of one bag was 20 Yuan, so the three of them made a healthy profit of 240 Yuan in 5 minutes. Not too bad for people with no conscience.

3. When you buy things in the dark or in big areas of shade, some people will give you these as 20 Yuan note change. These look like Russian currency, but actually they are paper monopoly money! So stupid. Our tour guide said he will buyback ALL of these types of notes we receive from the shady sellers, as he feels embarrassed by this.

4. Some days you'll see 'masters' sitting next to a preset chess board and will ask bypassers to challenge them. The rule in this scenario below is that if the bypasser can defeat the master in 3 moves or less, he will give you back your money 10-fold.

The guy in red is the 'master'.

The challenger in black looks suspicious, because he placed a 200 Yuan bet 3 times in a row and lost. If the average wage for a Chinese is 1000-2000 Yuan/month, can he afford to lose 600 Yuan in 5 minutes?? It looks like they're in the same group, working together to trick money. Another guy standing next to me saw my mobile phone and threatened to hit me. But it was too late because I can now go home to solve this. Likely that it is not possible to win in 3 moves.

5. Sometimes you feel really jibbed when you (or i in this case) walk into a full looking restaurant, sit down, order, and then see all the patrons stand up and start cooking, cleaning, talking, and makes me think: "they were all...waiters??" But it is too late to walk out.

Reminds me of Zen's massage parlours where sometimes if you look closely, the people getting massaged are in Zen's massage uniform. I suppose it is hitting all 3 birds with one stone - owner not wasting acquired resources, workers receiving extra employment benefits, and makes Zen's look like a thriving business for potential business buyers.