I tagged along with two of my colleagues to Luohu Commercial City. It is a shopping mall right next to the Shenzhen-Hong Kong border’s customs building (first picture). Wikipedia says the place is notorious in Hong Kong for its bargains, and that many “one-day” visitors from Hong Kong venture no further into Shenzhen than the mall. Most of the items for sale in the mall, however, are either counterfeit or cheap replicas of designer brands, and the mall has a reputation for selling low-quality goods through high-pressure bargain tactics.
So it’s not for people like me that 1. hate haggling over prices, and 2. want the real thing! But there we were – and it wasn’t long before a ‘guide’ latched on to us, inquiring what we were interested in buying, and then taking us a store owner that sells it. The guide was a nice young kid and I hope he gets money from the shop-owners he brought us to. I am pretty sure he does. We also stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall tea shop, and the owner sat us down and served up green tea, oolong tea and jasmine tea. We loved the green tea and each bought a ‘brick’ of the stuff. Then we hopped in the taxi and came back to Dameisha.
