Shopping in Beijing

Shopping in Beijing is mostly great fun because prices are so low. However, you need to sharpen your ability to bargain to avoid paying too much. There are many places to shop in Beijing and I list a few below, the biggest and most popular shopping place.

Wangfujing

Wangfujing is the most famous street in China and it continues to attract attention from around the world. Both foreigners and Chinese people come here to shop, even if the price is high.

At the beginning the street is the Oriental Plaza, a large department store, consisting of 11 different buildings and owned by a businessman from Hong Kong. It attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each day. The department store is 1600 feet long and there you can shop for all kinds of luxury, diamonds and designer clothes. Not at all cheap, either.

China’s largest bookshop is on Wangfujing. They claim to have 200,000 different books and it is six stories high.

Xidan

Xidan is the paradise for shopping (one of many). The shopping street is a mile long and there are all kinds of stores, you can find everything from socks to BMW cars. The price here is lower than on Wangfujing.

At Xidan, there are always different activities going on and it is decorated in various themes.

There are also plenty of restaurants, all the American chains like Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonalds, but also some Japanese and of course a lot of Chinese restaurants.

Silk Market

Silk Market in Beijing is almost as famous as the Great Wall and Peking Duck. It is located next to the American Embassy, at the metro station Yong An Li on line 1. Before, it was an outdoor market, located just outside the fence to the U.S. embassy. Now it has moved indoors to an 8-storey department store.

Here you can buy everything, souvenirs, Chinese silk, brand clothing and watches. Most (read: all) is pirated.

You need to bargain hard. Aim for one tenth or one-fifth of what they are asking for. Remember also that very many sell the same things so you do not feel any pressure that you must buy from the seller.

Outside the Silk Market, there are many who sell CDs and DVDs. Quality differs, but expect movies that have not been released on “real” dvd yet, to be of poor quality. They are often filmed from inside a cinema. Sellers, however, are serious and you can get their mobile phone number so you can meet again to return the broken movies (I have done it at a couple of occasions). The price is about 10 yuan per piece.

The article ends here this time. This is only a small fraction of all the shopping available in Beijing, but it is at least something to start with.