Shopping & Bargaining

Prices, classifiers, and how to haggle

Shopping is where the Type System earns its keep. You cannot buy three of anything in Chinese without first declaring what type of thing it is: three flat-pieces-of-clothing, three bound-volumes, three long-narrow-things. Every purchase is a type-checked expression, and the classifier is the type annotation that sits between the number and the noun. About twenty classifiers cover ninety percent of daily shopping, and a dozen are enough to get through a market without embarrassment.

// A purchase as a typed expression.
function buy<T>(
    count: number,
    classifier: Classifier<T>,  // must match T
    item: T
): Purchase;

buy(3, 件, 衣服);  // ✓ 件 accepts clothing
buy(2, 本, 书);    // ✓ 本 accepts bound things
buy(1, 本, 鞋);    // ✗ type error — shoes need 双

1. askPrice(item)

Four patterns cover every price question. Pick by how specific you want to be.

Answer forms you'll hear back — all mean "100 yuan":

2. Price vocabulary

Currency units

Ten-five-five price: 10.55 yuan spoken is 十 块 五 毛 五 (shí kuài wǔ máo wǔ). The final unit is often dropped — you don't need to say 分.

Price adjectives and discounts

3. Classifiers for common goods

Learn these twelve and you can shop for almost anything. Pattern is always number + classifier + noun.

4. bargain()

The haggling module. Only call this in the right context — outdoor markets, antique shops, tourist-trap street vendors, small independent stalls. Never at chain stores, supermarkets, malls, or anywhere with a barcode scanner.

Opening offer math

Rough heuristic for outdoor tourist markets:

• Counter at ~30–50% of asking price.
• Settle around 50–70% of asking.
• Non-tourist local markets: tighter margins — start at ~70% and don't expect much movement.
• Antiques and jade: all bets off. The asking price is theatre.

5. pay()

Modern China is overwhelmingly cashless. QR-code payments via phone have replaced almost all small-transaction cash use. Cards work in big stores; cash works everywhere but sometimes confuses young clerks who haven't counted change in months.

6. Sample dialogs

7. Edge cases

"I'm just looking" — and returns

Size and color

Why 打 八 折 is 20% off, not 80% off

A classic mistranslation trap. 打折 literally means "hit a fraction" — but the fraction refers to the price you pay, not the discount amount. 打 八 折 = "set price to 8/10" = pay 80% = save 20%.

• 打 九 折 = pay 90% = 10% off
• 打 八 折 = pay 80% = 20% off
• 打 五 折 = pay 50% = 50% off
• 打 三 折 = pay 30% = 70% off (blowout-sale territory)

Rule: subtract the 折 number from 10 to get the actual discount percentage.

8. Next steps

• The full measure-word cheatsheet — all 20-plus classifiers with edge cases
• Numbers & Dates phrasebook — the digits behind every price
• Browse shopping vocabulary — filtered by tag
• Module 2: The Type System — the theory behind classifiers
• Measure Word Type Check — drill the classifier-noun pairings

Shopping is the perfect domain to drill classifiers — every real purchase is a live type-check. Once the common dozen are automatic, the rest drop into place from sheer exposure.