Mattresses

This is Mengna, my coworker and her sister at their apartment. We had dinner there before setting out on our first mattress hunting expedition.

Most Chinese sleep on hard, wooden boxes, with a thin layer of padding over the top. I'd say they are harder than a box spring under our western mattresses. They also have a woven, stretched type mattress, that is also very hard, about like a strong Army cot. There are aspects of my life in which I am willing to live by the phrase "when is Rome, do as the Romans do", but my bedding isn't one of them. Having been spoiled by my pillowtop mattress in Fayetteville I was really looking forward to moving into an apartment so I could get one again. I wanted to be able to fall into my bed without fear of being bruised and roll around as I slept w/o my arms going asleep. A coworker Mengna, somehow, very graciously volunteered to help me out. I had dinner with her and her sister at their nice, clean, simple apartment that again made me feel guilty about my pickiness in regards to my apartment. As a degreed professional her bedroom was completed with a small bed just as I described above. The first night they took me to four mattress shops and found one that had more than 1" of padding. I figured it would do, but after passing many shops that had already closed I said I'd wait until Sunday when we could go shopping again to make my decision. I have learned to lean heavily on my "accustomed to" card when trying to explain to them why I'm spending a couple of times more than they would. They showed me a very comfortable mattress that they had negotiated in Fenghua dialect down to 300 RMB. The nicer mattress I referred to was "too expensive" and not until I asked again did they tell me it was 700 RMB. I told them I thought I might be able to afford it.

Sunday we went to a few more shops then onto a large furniture mall type place a couple kms north of Fenghua. It was very nice. While it had the typical and traditional Chinese style furniture, it also had a wide variety of very trendy and designer furniture that I found appealing. The pippette barstool goes for 200 RMB w/o negotiating. Makes me wonder what I could get a container load for.... (anyone else in?)

Mengna, my accomplice, told me an idiom that translates to mean something like "if you go to 100 stores you will find what you want", so from then on I started counting down. I think we were at 86 when I finally picked one. It was in stock and my size so I was ready to buy it at 1500 RMB, a ghastly price. I prefer to hear their best price from the start, but she negotiated down to 1300, and I knew what very similar mattresses at the other stores cost so I was pretty comfortable with the deal. For some reason, I guess I was just happy to find it, I figured I'd play along for once. I took over from there and by asking for a couple add-ons that they couldn't find finally took off another 100. I didn't really care about the extra 100; I just wanted to partake in the hard line bargaining for once. This guy delivered it. That's like a chainsaw motor underneath it. These and larger three-wheeled vehicles are everywhere.