musical thrift

For the handy price of 1000 kuai (about $146 US) I got two musical instruments, a decent guitar and erhu, both at once – making me a musician again, but with new things to learn. Having all but stopped pursuit of the clarinet and piano studies that defined my youth, I think this cements my fate of being limited to a surveyor of music rather than a virtuoso of it. But it’s still fun, and it felt damn good to be carrying an instrument case in my hand again!

The instruments came from the HuaYueFang music store that I’ve scoped out multiple times before, and where I got the free erhu demo lesson last week. The two young storekeepers, who by now I know as Benny Fang and Miss Ye, always look happy when I walk in and have been very friendly and helpful with both my music questions and Chinese. Actually, the guitar and erhu together should have cost 1280 kuai and the erhu case that they threw in another hundred kuai or so. But both Miss Ye and Benny (both of whom can’t be much older than me) immediately said that they’d discount them for me, and afterwards Benny said in his fledgling English “of course I’ll discount it; I think you are a good person.”

Of course I was happy with getting the instruments at all for any price, and the discounts were certainly nice, but I wonder if I could have gotten the price down even more by being a hardass. On the other hand, what I may have lost in further price reductions, I’ll gain by having good relations with those two shopkeepers for the rest of the year, which may be very useful considering I’ll be taking lessons there too. This episode made me wonder about the two modes of getting what you want as an expat in a foreign country (especially China) – bully your way through or smile and hope for the best. By nature I avoid confrontation like the plague, so I always default to the latter. It has its pros and cons – I feel like I build a sense of community among new friends who will be much easier to deal with in the future, but I could also be suckered (for instance, if Benny and Miss Ye are actually not as beneficent as they seem, it might be feasible – though unlikely – that they are still getting a hefty profit from me). My approach also just plain doesn’t work in some environments (I absolutely hate going to Dongmen, the clothing and electronics bazaar market where the sales clerks can only be called hawks and from whom a stupid smile will get you nothing).

But there are certainly other expats who are quick to assert themselves defensively. I dislike it because I think it makes us all come across as jerks, but I’ll concede the street smarts that accompany it.

Anyway, whatever, what am I overthinking for! I’m a musician again!