Carpets Galore

Beijing has all kinds of stores. Markets where floor upon floor consist of small stalls filled with "dongxi", a catchword for "things" you may want to buy. Dong meaning east...-xi meaning west. And these markets literally sell anything under the sky from east to west. Then there are really upscale malls where prices far surpass even what you would pay at a mall in the US. In between you find hole-in-the wall places: small stores often specializing in one item and with good prices.
With winter approaching, suddenly our wooden floors looked awfully bare. So as I walked by a hole-in the-wall carpet store one day, I decided to go in to have a look. The owner, Aileen, a young woman around 30 was very pleasant and pulled down carpet after carpet for me to look at. She also volunteered to bring half the store to our apartment should I so desire. As I was only hoping to buy one, I declined that offer, thanked her for the chat and left.

A week later Philip and I had another day of biking, and suddenly found ourselves in front of the same store. We needed a little break, and decided that he may want a look as well. Since we bought a silk carpet in India some years ago, we have both been very partial to silk rugs. China is a prime location for silk, so it did not take long before the offer of bringing some rugs to the house was accepted. But we are only planning to buy one, we said over and over, and this presented no problems.

Two days later I went down to help guide the truck to our basement. Our address is easy to find, but for deliveries it s easier if cars drive directly to our underground parking garage where they can take an elevator right to the apartment. Looking over the carpets with Aileen, suddenly we were surrounded by 11 possibilities. "No problem"- nothing here ever is!!. Her delivery truck was in for repairs, so we stepped out on the street, hailed a taxi, threw the carpets in the trunk and were on our way. What a difference it made, suddenly 9 silk carpets and 2 wool woven carpets were making our abode very cozy indeed. Aileen and her helper left, telling me to call when we had made a decision.

Now we were in the negotiation phase. Philip has become very adept at bargaining, but these are really nice rugs. Taking just one suddenly seemed out of the question as our eyes feasted on the luscious colors and designs. We asked for a 30% discount and ended up with 15% off and Ailleen telling us she had no more room to bargain and still make a profit. Her initial price, in fact, did appear to be 20% less than what we had seen in another carpet store. The final price was agreeable to both as long as we tell all our friends to go to Aileen”s shop. Meanwhile, our floors look inviting and the entire apartment suddenly feels several degrees warmer. As you probably guess, even though the majority of rugs went back with Aileen, we could not stop at one.
Astri