I found out after returning to Shaoxing that Zhuji produces 73% of the worlds freshwater pearls. That's amazing. And the market proved it. The building that housed the market was gianourmous. More square footage than any state fair exhibition hall or sports stadium I've ever seen. Each 'store' in the place was only the size if a decent mall kiosk. Like rows of storage units, but with pearls. The stores were different retailers of the pearls but each one only had a few finished products. Necklaces, bracelets, pendants, etc. Most of their pearls were in strings and in bunches or ten strings or so and bagged on shelves. Each store had to have thousands of pearls just siting there. And there were dishes of single pearls sorted by color, size, and quality. I was concerned about imitation pearls. In a place this size there had to be some. What really amazed me though is that the ones you would think were fake because of their size, clarity, and perfect round shape were actually real and worth thousands of kuai. (6 kuai= 1 dollar). There were pearls of all colors imaginable. The real, not dyed, pearls were all shades of white, cream, and pinkish hues. They were mostly round, with some very interesting odd shaped ones too.
The fun part of shopping here was the bartering. Very few places had price tags. You looked things over, decided if you liked something and asked how much. Then, you barter 'em down. It worked real well for our group because we had four foreigners and four Chinese. So we paired off to do our shopping. It works better that way. Emma, my friend, helped me save a lot of money. She even told one lady that Americans don't like the number 13....which allowed my necklace to go from 130 to 100 kuai. She's pretty great.
Over all I spent about 1100 kuai on five pendants, three necklaces and a ring. Which are all gorgeous, and destined for the beautiful women in my life when I return home. I had to ask what pearls were worth in America. I didn't know how good of a deal I was getting. I discovered that most pearl necklaces in America sell for roughly $150-$200 depending on size and color. Well, I got all my treasures for just under $200. I think I got a good deal.
Until next time.
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