the general area has around half a dozen high rise building all filled with electronics and gadgets and whatnot... most of the are setup market style and you can find anything you want. I've got to know the seller below quite well ... for possible obvious reasons ;) ... some of the products you may have purchased at the store we sourced by him or his colleagues.

hey laogong ... i know what you want ....

one of these friggin things ... is that right! ;) Now can we go to Xidan :) ???

the sellers can be very aggressive at times ... grabbing you by the arms ... they're very keen to make a sale to say the least ... its not the kind of place you come for 'a browse' although i'm often using the term 'wo kan kan' which means that youre just having a look ... its transliteration is 'i look look' ... chinese language is often kinda cute. hehe.

Well you may have noticed that game gear above ... it's all either 'imported' or 3rd party accessories ... the consoles usually get pulled in from HK ... so its not that far really. None of the major console sellers have 'officially' launched here ... there business models 'wouldn't allow it' they say. Selling consoles at a loss ... how much software would they sell? I dunno but there seems to be a lot of audi drivers around town ... i guess they figure they don't have time for games ;).

Nintendo however are a different story they often release products in a different way into the market ... here we have the 'I Que DS' ... yep its a nintendo DS. I guess they actually make money of their hardware. Interesting huh. But the other interesting thing is there are complete nds clones in the market. So if you want to get a 'real' one you buy an Ique ... this one was bound to a good friend! Inside theres a registration id number so you can check with nintendo if you got a real one and they made a few bucks ... how much are the clones i hear you ask .. well interestingly there only about 200 quai less ... although perhaps thats because i wasn't bargaining too hard for one and the seller could see i wanted the ique anyway.

Chromi also got his hands on an ol N64 Ique ... i'll see if i can get him to donate me some pics so I can blog about that. They would distribute the games through a 'recharge' machine!

Well i've been coming to old ZGC for a couple of years ...(zhongguancun .. "whats that place called again" .. says chromi ... it definitely takes a while to remember names of places in chinese ... it requires the firing or several more neurons i think) . MS have been here a while too ... they recently announced they are putting in a 'R&D Centre' ... from memory i think they said it will hold up to 30,000 employees ... shouldn't that be R&D City! I knew there was something in it ... al these computer markets and what not ... they all better be getting a copy of windows hey bill... the ironic thing is i can go grab a 'questionable' copy of windows just about a 20 minute walk away :) unfortunately there were no vendors outside ... well not today at least!

An thats 2 MS flags and one China Flag ... awww how pretty!

The more and more i see of business in china you see what im calling 'the group theory' in action. Kindof like if you want to buy a car in adelaide you would have to drive down main north road medindie .. theres masses of car merchants. In china everytime something is being sold theres at least another half a dozen people selling the same thing within a few blocks ... or sometimes metres!

OK (hao de!) Check this out! well i seem to have a bicycle fascination but anyway it's not everyday you see this ... and apparently it goes up one more level ... i don't know how they get it up and down but it can seriously hold a lot of bikes! On another interesting note one of the girls who used to shre our apartment back a 6Mile Bridge works down here ... just some general sales duties and what not ... she was paid around 1000 rmb ... per month! go on work that one out! Now you know why there was 2 girls sharing one room. You have have to get pretty savvy in BJ to climb up the pay scale ... overseas education or relatives in places of power will help.but most of all ... good luck! The chinese love their lucky charms. I'll save that one for another day ;) maybe the 12 of the 12th or something ...