Shopping as an endurance sport!

I enjoy shopping for trinkets and souvenirs as much as most people, however today's experience was something we have never experienced. We had, guess how much time? yes 90 minutes to shop, and I use this term loosely, on four or five floors full of vendor stalls, all competing against each other. We were warned by our guide that we will be overcharged and we would need to bargain. The suggested plan is to offer only 1/3 of their first price, then bargain down and to not pay more than half the original cost. At first, that sounds doable and orderly. Then we entered the sports arena. As we walked the hallways we were accosted by mainly Chinese girls yelling out, pushing items in our faces, and occasionally blocking our way. But a few times, physically touching us and not letting us pass. Since we had already done more than enough shopping and were already worried about fitting our purchases in our suitcase for our flight tomorrow, we had one agenda item. For those of you who know Diana you can probably guess what we were looking for....yes, jewelry. We headed straight for the third floor and encountered probably 100 individual stalls. We went to to the first one we saw and looked "disinterested" with the items, trying to prepare for our bargaining. We found exactly what we were looking for and were initially told the items were 85 yuan each (about 12 US dollars) so we played the game and countered a few times, Diana said she thought they were too expensive, then we said we would purchase two for 75. When I pulled out my 100 I had hoped she would not want to give me change and offer me the third for the 100 yuan.....and success. So we purchased three charms with Chinese characters for roughly $14.00. We were proud of our bargaining skills. We ran into our friends and walked through the stalls with our new Chinese words "Boo ya Xie Xie" or No Thank you. (That may be spelled wrong...) Diana was amazing...she was so strong walking through the gauntlet of vendors yelling Boo (no) and Boo ya Xie Xie. We laughed hysterically when Karen ended up with a Chinese soccer shirt for roughly $7.00 and they threw in the shorts too. Hannah purchcased some "Ughs" which we think must be knock offs, but still a great price for leather boots at less than $24.00. We all had a good laugh and heading for the "knock off" starbucks with the copy cat logo before returning to the bus. Our day finished with dinner in a minority restaurant with some folk dancers. It was a little hokey, especially the one dance with "air guitars." We were not sure these were really traditional performances :). I think all of the girls had plates of rice and french fries for dinner. I think Diana is ready for a Pizza hut dinner soon. We finally returned back to the hotel around 8 Pm and Diana promply fell asleep. We have another early day tomorrow, meeting the bus at 7 am to head for our "official ceremony" at the office of Civil Affairs. This is the office that completed our paperwork for our adoption 12 years ago, however in Nanjing. We are told this will be a very special morning and we are very excited. We will leave for the airport to fly to Nanjing around 11:30 am. We will have about a 2 hour flight and then a couple of hour bus ride to reach Yangzhou. I am hoping we have internet access at our Yangzhou hotel. It is a Chinese hotel, not a western hotel like the Radisson here in Beijing.