Jade Factory – The Biggest Hoax Of Our China Packaged Travel

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