Wow! Sound serious right? Was it that bad? I’m sorry but to say “Yes!”, in terms of the way they list their price, and the final deal you will get. It could be as much as 80% discount!! (Could be more. This is only figure that we managed to get…) Is it considered serious? Can I now say that it was the biggest hoax of all? I bet I can…

After our morning site seeing session to Nanjing City Wall for, err…, merely 45 minutes or less (local tour guide would chase us off to catch the so-called ‘no parking space’ couch after 45 minutes ), we were brought by Xiao Zhang, the unfriendly and over-pride Nanjing local tour guide, to where he claimed is one of the best jade factory. Looking at my clock, I know we were going to spend at least 1 and a half hour there until lunch hour. That is the difference between site seeing and factory visit.

At the entrance lobby, as usual, Xiao Zhang introduced to us briefly what is jade and how to differentiate normal jade and good jadeit. According to him, quality of jade depends on its clarity and transparency. The more transparent it is, the higher quality the jade would be. This reminded me of diamond where the same principle applies. Frankly speaking, if you ask me, I can’t even differentiate which is crystal and which is jade. Both looked the same to me. Jade, jasper, crystal and diamond are all natural stone but from different origin, place, with different weather and type of stones.

We were then led by one of the sales person to one of the ‘conference’ rooms and started being ’psycho’ by the sales lady on how good is their jade products and price. Perhaps we stole 15 minutes off their scheduled timing at Nanjing City Wall, they didn’t even demonstrate to us how they cut and carve bracelet and necklace pendant, like other groups of tourists (I saw it in the other ’conference’ room on our way out later). After that, she brought us back out to the showroom and a group (Yes. A group of no less than 5) of sales ladies approached each one of us and started to sell!

They have full range of jade products, from pendants, bracelet, rings to stamps. Jean and I wandered around too see if there is anything we like.  Honestly, we couldn’t know whether those jadeit they sell are real jades, high quality jade, jasper or crystal. Travel Tips: Don’t care whether they are genuine or good quality, buy things that you like with the price you think is acceptable, in China.

Jean spotted one necklace. This was the one…(above),  about one inch long. It’s jadeit carved into the shape of Pi Xiu (貔恘), a Feng Shui animal in Chinese believe. Its list price was RMB2,500. The sales person offerred Jean RMB2,000 initially. We thought it’s expensive though we didn’t know how much should it be. After some bargaining, she further offerred her final price to RMB1,300! See? From RMB2.5k to 1.3k, almost 50% off!! Is this how they normally do business? The point is, if, one customer didn’t bargain at all, he would pay double the price! What a hoax! This was scared us off! What if we take up the offer and found cheaper offer later on? We walked out the eixt without buying to take a break and told one of our fellow group members about this. He laughed and told us he had got the same experience on his Beijing trip before. And he taught us one tactic to buy souvenirs in China: Offer back the sales person one final price that you are happy to pay, no matter how low, and see if she agree, take it or leave it, and don’t regret of buying or leaving without buying, after that.

We taught might as well try it since we have nothing to lose (most importantly, Jean loves it very much!). We firmed up our price and went back into the showroom. “Ok! Now I could only pay RMB800 for the necklace, take it or leave it?” “No no no. It’s too low, we will lose money! What about RMB1,000?” “Nevermind, maybe next time… let’s go!” “Wait! Handsome, come back. Ok ok ok, don’t let us lose so much, RMB880! Deal?” “Deal!”

How? Instead of RMB2,500 llist price, her final offer of RMB1,300, now we only paid RMB880 for the necklace!!! Let’s do some calculation….. almost 70% off! What a hoax! Not only us. This couple from our tour group also were being offerred RMB3,000 for a bracelet from a list price of RMB15,000! (Can you feel it? Count the number of times symbol ‘!’ being added!)

We pulled them off for a smoking break and tried not to go back in again. Jean took a photo of me just outside of the jade gallery. And you know what? Xiao Zhang came out and shouted to us, “Hey! What are you doing here? Go up! Your lunch would be here also at 1st floor! GO!”….What the hack.

Luckily, after lunch, we would say ‘Sayonara’ to him and off for another significant city of China, a city of clay pot, Wuxi  - Travel Feeder.

All above photos were captured by Panasonic Lumix Fz28

On the 6th day of our packaged travel to South Yangtze China, we were still in Nanjing, the 4th city we travelled after Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. We had a bad sleep last night in this hotel in Nanjing (never bother to remember the name also! ). Frankly speaking, besides of this Nanjing’s hotel, all other hotels that we stayed on our whole trip were very good in terms of cleanlinese, comfort, design and also choices of breakfast. I have to admit this is one of the few advantages of packaged tour where, if you book with established and recognised travel agency, you could always rest assure of good accomodation as promised. Or if you travel by yourself and book budget hotel online, you will need those trusty booking agent online.

Eventhough we had to wake up early morning at 7am, and with the bad sleep, I still felt quite energetic. Thanks to the extremely good weather and those reasonably good varieties of local styled chinese breakfast. Though we had the same type of varieties (almost) over the last 5 mornings, I still like it.

This morning on the 6th day, the last travel destination we visited in Nanjing was the ancient Ming Dynasty City Wall of DongShuiGuan (东水关), the left-over historical remains or vestige besides the QinHuai river and across the FuZiMiao pedestrian district we visited the night before.

Nanjing City Wall or Dong Shui Guan has been named as the National Heritage Site by China in 1988. “Excuse me, do you mind taking a photo for 5  of us?”

This city wall remains is one of the best kept heritage in the world. With original length of 30km, it is also claimed as the longest city wall in the world and 60% of it are still standing!

Though part of the outer wall has collapsed over time, it still stand really tall from ground level…. so called city wall to protect the city.

We visited only part of the stretched remains in QinHuai Scenic Area across the river. Until the 6th day, I had to be gratitude on how lucky we were during the trip. It had not been raining since day 1 until the last day of our trip to China! And what’s more, we had the brightest and clearest day on the 6th day.

Air temperature raised back to 10°C on that day (we visited Nanjing in early winter) with bright sun and blue sky. Perfect photo shoot out weather!!! My Lumix FZ28 had to work really hard on that day!

This scenic area features, besides the city wall, a recreational garden where elderies or retirees relax and make friends.

Babies and grandchildren could also be seen everywhere at the park.

Posing in front of the 600-year-old city wall was just another pleasure…

Let’s talk about the construction of Nanjing City Wall. The construction of the wall spent 20 years to complete in 14th Centuries, spearheaded by ZhuYuanZhang of Ming Dynasty. The whole wall is sitting on granite and limestone foundation. The vertical brickwall was constructed with carefully picked sources of factories from various part of ancient China.

Because of that, you could see all bricks were stamped with the name of factories. It was believed that by doing so, any brick failure could be traced back to the factory and the mason would be chopped head!

On top of the wall, we could oversee the river of QinHuai, once popularly known as “red light district” of China. FuZiMiao pedestrian district could be seen at far end.

QinHuai River is also famous with its tourist cruise. These chinese design boat we once rode in HangZhou West Lake could also be seen here parking at the quay.

 Old folk with her granddaughter, looking at cruise lining up at quay….

We spent quite a lot of time shooting photos around the area before we left for our next  hoax of the trip, the jade factory…. You may prefer to subscribe to Travel Feeder’s RSS feed for free update of the stories. Or you may consider to sponsor for my upcoming travel- Travel Feeder.

All above photos were captured by Panasonic Lumix Fz28