Shanghai'd

Cell phone.
Buying a cell phone, like all other transactions in Shanghai is an adventure. You must bargain for everything, and you're never quite sure exactly what you're getting. Along with William, our dutiful translator for the afternoon, we went to the market next to the NI office (which sells everything from plasma TVs to rice) in search of shouji dianhua. Imagine walking into the Best Buy, eyeing the new Samsung slide phone and offering the pimple-faced sales guy half the sticker price for it. Along the way, you will be confronted with the choice of paying slightly more for the phone which has arrived the "normal way", presumably ligitimately from Samsung in Korea, or getting a bargain price for the "Hong Kong way" version, which from what we could gather meant it was some sort of refurbished phone via Hong Kong that comes with no guarantees. 1 hour and about 8 very beauracratic official stamps later we were connected.