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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
Bargaining at a market is as an elegant artform, akin to a simultaneous dance and chess match between two strangers. Growing up in Ganzhou, China, my grandparents would take me to the outdoor open-air market every weekend while they bargained for groceries. It is a scene that I’ve long been deprived of since moving to Canada at the age of eight.
Lately, I keep thinking about the Rwebikoona market in Mbarara, Uganda, near where I lived for a summer while doing research at the local university.
In the eight minute walk to the market, I navigated dirt cratered roads engulfed in clouds of dust brought by the frequent passing of the boda-bodas, which are motorcycle taxis that are the main way of getting around the city. There are no sidewalks and no traffic lights. On either side of the road are gutters often filled with raw sewage. Around dinner time, the whole city is filled with a gentle brown haze from the smoke of everyone cooking with charcoal, making the maroon sunset ever more romantic. Just before I’d reach the market, there was a gas station protected by a guard holding an AK-47.
In the market, hundreds of vendors spread out in the rows of stalls, while dozens of others sat on tarps on the yellow dirt floor in front of the market, and many sold fruits from the back carriages of their bicycles. Everything from baby mangos and baby bananas to large pineapples and watermelons, from eggplants to a hybrid between bok choy and lettuce that I have never seen before, from flip flops to electronics, from live chickens to fish.
I was welcomed by the fragrant smell of chapatis cooking in the many stands in the front of the market. There is the smell of fresh meat chopped by butchers, the familiar aroma of rotten vegetables that I remember from the Ganzhou market, and the smell of goat skewers being roasted in the restaurant next door. I heard the laughter of children running around playing hide and seek, and old ladies gossiping side-by-side at their stands. In the Ugandan market, more so than anywhere else, I felt the pulse of the city, and saw the hopes and struggles of the people in its rawest form.
Dozens and dozens of women hunched over sewing machines, making dresses and shirts. Men sawed lumber and made wooden furniture in another corner of the market. Still others soldered electronics in the handful of repair shops. Everywhere I looked, there was something different happening, layer upon layer of hustle and bustle, a vibrancy that I will never find in the supermarkets and malls of Toronto, or any city in the developed world for that matter.
Vendors tried to get my attention by calling me “my friend,” “my brother,” “China,” “Japan” or “Mizungu,” the local word for foreigner. Once they got my attention, the bargaining dance began.
“How much for the watermelon?” I’d ask.
“6,000 shillings,” the man responded. “They are very good.”
There are no price tags anywhere in the market. A friend told me that vendors will always try to charge me double what they charge the locals. But there is art to bargaining, something my grandparents taught me in the dirt markets of Ganzhou over 20 years ago. One method is to tell the vendor how much their competitors charge.
“I bought a watermelon for 3,000 yesterday, same size,” I said.
“The price has gone up, because the weather is very dry,” he lied. “And my watermelon is better.”
I walked away.
Another tactic is to just name the price and go with it. At the next vendor, I said, “I will give you 3,000 for that watermelon, okay?”
“4,000,” the lady responded. Her child stares at me in fascination and awe, likely one of the first times she has ever seen someone who looks like me, and looked away in shyness when I smiled at her.
“3,500,″ I replied, craving watermelon and tired of bargaining for so long. She agrees and I take the watermelon.
In this chaotic dirt market, half a world from where I was born and another half a world from the place I now call home, I found a piece of my lost past, and rediscovered my paradise.
If only I can bring part of that paradise back to Canada. Before my family left China, one of my uncles told me that immigrating to the developed world was trading a place that is “dirty, loud but exciting” for a place that is “comfortable, clean but boring.” He asked me to think about if it was worth it.
For the most part, I would say it is, although I frequently miss parts of the old world.
As immigrants, however, perhaps we can find more ways to try to bring the vibrancy of the old world to Canada – with more open air markets, with street food vendors that sell more than just hot-dogs, by building a lively local artisanship scene and more cultural festivals. That way everyone can have the best of both worlds.
Li (Danny) Liang lives in Vancouver.