It was my second day in Shanghai. I was to leave for the airport in a while, so we decided to stroll around the hotel to kill time. As we turned the corner, I was accosted by a small boy carrying several chunky looking wrist watches. He waved one particularly good-looking one right under my nose. “Very cheap, very good,” he repeated several times. Out of curiosity I took it from his hand and had a close look. It was good. “Rolex day-date automatic chronometer”, proclaimed the beautiful dial. Very chunky — just as my younger son would like it — it almost looked like the real thing. “How much?” I think I gave in rather easily, because the little fellow smiled and immediately punched 350 on his calculator and pushed it under my nose. “Very cheap, very good,” he repeated again. “Take two.”I was tempted. For the price — it meant roughly 44 US dollars — I thought it was a good buy. Yet, as a true Indian and also knowing the Chinese propensity to bargain, I thought I would offer him 250 yuan each and perhaps buy 2 pieces. I turned to my colleague Atul and asked him in Hindi if my offer was fair. “Not a chance, return the damned thing, don’t utter a word, don’t even give the urchin a second glance and just keep walking,” answered Atul rapidly. Having lived in China for almost 35 years, he obviously knew best. I felt bad, I was wondering if I would have offended the boy by offering so low a price for a really handsome copy of the famous watch. I was soon to be proved wrong.The kid kept chasing us. After almost 200 yards, Atul turned to him and said something in Chinese. The boy made a face and punched 150 on his calculator. We walked a little more, watch salesman in tow. Another 200 yards, some more pestering, silence from our side and the boy now showed us 100 on the calculator. This time Atul took the calculator from him and punched 30. I was amazed. He’d obviously started with less, maybe 25. From 350 to 25 and for such a gorgeous looking piece of machinery. The boy again made a face, we resumed walking. He was still following us and this time came up with 70.Atul looked at him with, I thought, some disdain, wanting to shake him off. I was getting worried. I wanted the damned watches: 70 yuan (under $9) appeared a fabulous price. Why was he letting it go. I reached for my pocket and once again Atul stopped me, “You’ll get two watches for the price, just wait please.” He punched 35x2 this time and made a gesture of finality with his right hand. The kid promptly took out two watches from his pocket, accepted 70 yuan and ran back smiling to his friends.Can they really make them so cheap? By the way, the two watches are still working after an year.
