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Thread: Shopping in Beijing is expensive! What city is still cheap?

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[quote=GRIZ326,252957]As I have posted many times in this forum, the only bargain in China today is food. ...and you can get a very nice hotel room for 200 RMB that includes breakfast...but that's a big chunk out of a $100 USD bill so it doesn't "feel" like a bargain.

The only places I have found bargains were in merchant-to-merchant stores in Guangzhou. The prices were good, but most of the merchandise was poor quality. I have been to jade "outlet stores" and while the prices were very high, so was the quality. Buying the piece from the "outlet store" provided a substantial savings over buying it in a specialty store in the US. Does that qualify as a bargain? Even tea is quite expensive. I easily spent $200 USD for less tea than $200 would buy in the US, however, even though I am not a connoisseur I can taste the tea is much, much better than what you can find in the US.

I commented 2 years ago that my Made in China Kodak camera cost more in the Shengyang Walmart than it did in the US. I did find some electronics bargains in Nanning, but those were accessories not complete MP3 players, cameras or computers. Don't turn you nose up at the knock-offs; some of the knock-offs perform as well or better than the real item - but you have to know what you are buying and how to test it.

It is very easy to spend $200 USD a day unless you are being extremely frugal.

I am sorry that the Western media misled you. All those stores you see in Beijing, only a small percentage of them cater to tourists - the rest cater to city dwelling Chinese nationals who are "rolling in the dough!"   :-)[/quote]

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