Zhongguancun 中关村 is known as Beijing’s Silicon Valley because of the number of technology and computer companies located in the area. It is also the place to go to purchase personal electronics thanks to two giant buildings filled with stalls selling cameras, mp3 players, memory sticks, webcams - pretty much every electronic device you can imagine – and the ability to bargain the prices. It’s a quick bus ride away from BLCU which is an adventure in itself being a crowded, bumpy, slightly smelly journey which only costs 1 RMB or 12 cents US.

A group of us went to buy tablet/ PDA-style chinese-english electronic dictionaries with the hopes of saving the time and grief it takes to look up characters by rifling through a paper dictionary. After walking around, trying different models, and dodging overly aggressive salespeople, we settled on tiny Meijin 366s. I was the lucky one stuck with bargaining since Craig and Frederick are both beginners (they like to say they are at “zero level”) and Chris claims my listening/ speaking is better than his, which I am skeptical of since he is in a higher level than me at BLCU. With the benefit of a bulk purchase (we were buying 4 at a time) and some wheedling (“we are all language students! If you give us a good deal, we will tell our friends to buy from you!), the price went from the asking price of 600 RMB to 450 RMB or 54 USD.

We were pretty happy with our purchase but later we noticed that our dictionary was also sold in the campus store. The price of our specific model wasn’t indicated in the display but since prices of other dictionaries are very reasonable, we are afraid to ask how much our dictionary costs in the campus store and risk discovering that we overpaid. After all, ignorance is bliss – right?