Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It's good to develop a relationship with a vendor that you have success with. You can
easily come back again and request the same price as last time, or even have your friends
come and shop for the same price. Vendors love to know that they're going to get your re-
turn business, so it can help your bargaining to tell them that you'll use them again if they
give you a good price.
Tipping
There is no expectation of tipping in Beijing, be it for restaurants, taxis, or bars. If you are
determined to tip, be ready for a struggle. Some people will outright refuse to receive the
tip, and you may even have people come running after you to return the cash you “forgot”
on the table.
Beijing is a vast city, and the thought of running from district to district just to buy
something can be enough to make you make do with the more expensive, more convenient
alternatives. The online shopping world, however, is the key to transforming your concept
of convenience in Beijing. Products are cheaper, there's almost nothing you can't buy, and
delivery is fast and usually free. It just takes a little bit of effort to adapt to and to get your-
self set up. So here are some tips to get started.
Make sure you have an up-to-date operating system on your computer, especially if
you're not using a PC with Windows but are on a Mac. Many sites requiring any kind of
financial transaction won't work on anything older than Snow Leopard. If you can't get
things to work on your computer, explore the smartphone or iPad versions.
Be ready to experiment with different browsers, especially for Internet banking. Internet
Explorer is most successful, while Opera, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome vary in their com-
patibility with different websites.
Most of the good sites are completely Chinese, so if you can't read characters, try view-
ing pages through Google Chrome. The translation function might result in obscure gram-
mar for detailed documents, but it's usually perfectly adequate for making shopping selec-
tions and payment choices. Of course it can help to have a Chinese friend guide you through
the process the first few times. Have them save your address and other details in Chinese
so that you can copy and paste any time you need to enter them into a digital form. For
other browsers, you can download the Annotate bookmarklet from mandarinspot.com and
get word-by-word translations on any webpage. When searching for a product, try using the
English word. You'll probably find that what you want comes up.
