Shopping in China: Five Floors Between the Mall and the Factory

01Five Floors

Why does the same thing cost five different prices in China?

In China the price of a thing depends less on the thing than on where you are standing when you ask.

Our survey of shopping places sorts into five floors, and they run in one direction. At the top is the mall: printed prices, no bargaining, English on the signs, and the only floor where a foreign bank card is likely to work at the till. Below it is the old commercial street, the Wangfujing 王府井 or Nanjing Road 南京路 kind, where the big shops price like a mall and the small ones will knock a little off. Below that is the wholesale market 批发市场, where the unit is a stall a few metres square, the price is a conversation, and the first question is not "how much" but "how do I take it 怎么拿", meaning by the dozen. At the bottom is the factory town, where the market is built next to the plant and the price is whatever the plant will take.

The cards say this plainly. Of the mall districts we hold, nearly all list bargaining as no. Of the wholesale markets, most list it as yes, and the industrial clusters all do. English goes the other way, from "complete" at the top to "almost none" at the bottom, and the foreign card disappears by the second floor. The report we draw on gives one T-shirt five prices on the way down: the brand counter, the mall promotion, the flagship online, the subsidised app, and the wholesale stall in Guangzhou 广州 at a fifth of the first.

One floor sits off the line, and this page keeps returning to it. The tourist street and the museum shop charge more than the wholesale floor for objects that are often simpler, and they bargain little or not at all. What you pay for there is the story: the museum's authority, the street's name, the assurance that the thing came from here. Nobody is being cheated on that floor; it is a different purchase, and we say so where it applies.

So this page is not a list of shops. It is a description of the line, floor by floor, with the prices, the hours and the language you will meet on each, and then the three places where a visitor can walk the whole line in a day.

02What Foreigners Buy

What do foreign visitors actually buy in China, and where should they buy it?

The things visitors take home from China are mostly small, light and printed with a story, and the one rule about them is not to buy them at the gate.

The list, from the evidence we have. The report's own top twenty souvenirs and the Reddit threads we read agree on the core: museum products, above all the Palace Museum 故宫博物院's; tea, with Longjing 龙井, Tieguanyin 铁观音 and the black tea of Qimen 祁门 the ones a foreign palate takes to; porcelain from Jingdezhen; embroidery from Suzhou; dried fruit from the Urumqi 乌鲁木齐 bazaar; hotpot base 火锅底料 from Chongqing 重庆 in vacuum packs; the old Shanghai biscuits and milk sweets; a small thangka; an ikat 艾德莱斯 scarf from Xinjiang; cloisonné; a Yixing 宜兴 teapot; the Dunhuang 敦煌 flying-apsara scarf; Cantonese 广东 cured meat; Bai 白族 tie-dye 扎染 from Dali 大理. The Reddit threads add three things the report does not: running shoes 跑鞋, because Chinese brands now make good ones cheaply; a power bank with the CCC mark 3C 认证, because the airport checks for it; and the fact that hanfu 汉服 is rented for photographs, not bought. Nobody on those threads reports carrying snacks or spirits home, which does not mean nobody does.

Where each of these is bought decides what it costs and whether it is real. The report gives a six-line test that a visitor can run in a shop doorway: is the material local, is the design tied to this place or to any place, is the price explained by handwork, is the shop a workshop or a stall at the gate, is there a maker's or museum's mark, and would the person receiving it know where it came from. A panda magnet fails all six in every city; a Suzhou 苏州 double-sided embroidery passes all six in one.

The map that follows from this is short. Museum products in the museum shop. Crafts at the place they are made, which is the subject of a later block. Food from the old-name brands on the old street. Clothes and shoes in the mall, or from an app to the hotel. Small commodities from a wholesale floor if you want a hundred, from a night market if you want one. And nothing at the mouth of a scenic area 景区, where the report's own phrase is that the shops get cheaper the further in you walk.

03The Phone Is the Wallet

How does a foreigner pay in China without a Chinese bank account?

China pays by phone. A visitor who lands without Alipay 支付宝 or WeChat Pay 微信支付 registered and a bank card bound to it may spend the first day unable to buy a bottle of water. That is an exaggeration, and a fair one: the shops do take cash, but almost nobody in the queue is using it.

The setup is now done from abroad. WeChat Pay accepts a foreign card from the seven major card schemes, registered with a foreign mobile number and a passport, and it works at the same QR code the locals scan. Under the 2025 rules in our cards, purchases under two hundred yuan carry no fee, and a new user gets a daily allowance of a thousand yuan free of fees for the first two months; above that the fee is three per cent. Alipay's international version does the same and adds a prepaid tour card. UnionPay 银联's own app for visitors opens some three hundred Chinese services, from train tickets to food delivery, without binding a card to each. Keep a few hundred yuan in cash for the stall that only takes it, and expect the taxi not to.

The card in your pocket is a mall instrument. Of the shopping places we hold, only a handful say a foreign card works directly at the till, and nearly all of them are malls. The electronics market's own card says it plainly: no foreign card at the counter, but bind it to the phone and pay that way. The Chinese government reported that foreign-card payments through WeChat nearly doubled over the 2025 May holiday, which is the direction of travel.

The second half of the wallet is the hotel room. Chinese shopping apps deliver to any address, and the report describes the practice of ordering before you land and finding the parcel at the desk. The address is the hotel's full name, then "front desk to hold for guest" and your name in pinyin; same-city orders arrive next day. A visitor in Kunming 昆明 without a warm coat, one Reddit poster wrote, had one delivered to the hotel within the hour. The registration hurdle is real, and JD 京东 is the platform our cards call the friendliest, with an English interface and foreign cards accepted.

The delivery apps 外卖平台 are the other half of that room. Meituan 美团, Taobao 淘宝 and JD all take same-city orders, and the reason it works is that the shops on the street around your hotel have put their shelves on the app, and that the number of people who ride for a living 跑腿 is very large. In cities of the first tier down to the fourth, almost anything a visitor uses day to day can be at the door within the hour. Most people use it for food, and a visitor can too, because the dishes come with photographs and a translation app reads the rest. PreeChina has used these apps more than once to put a phone charger, a medicine or a forgotten personal item in a guest's hand inside an hour. One caution, from the same experience: do not order the cheapest meal on the list. At that price the oil and the ingredients are unlikely to be good.

The convenience store 便利店 is the floor that needs no page. Across China there are chains of the 7-Eleven kind, in business districts and residential ones, many open very long hours and some around the clock in the busy centres, selling the usual snacks, drinks, cigarettes, liquor and household goods, cheaply, most of them run by a couple. Some sell breakfast and hot meals. That is the whole description, because it is the one place in this country where a visitor needs no help.

04The Mall

What is a Chinese mall like, and do foreign cards work there?

The Chinese mall is the top floor of the line, and for a visitor it is also the toilet, the lunch and the place that takes the card.

Everything about it is fixed. Prices are printed and nobody expects to move them; of the mall districts in our survey nearly all say bargaining is no, and the few that say "partly" mean a promotion, not a conversation. English is best here, the hours are the same everywhere, ten in the morning to ten at night, and the flagship stores of the international brands are inside. The Reddit threads describe the mall as infrastructure rather than shopping: a clean toilet, a food court, air conditioning, and the shop you already know.

The luxury floor is a short list of cities. The report counts the country's top luxury malls at no more than thirty, in about ten cities, and the cards show what that looks like on the ground. In Shanghai one metro station at Jing'an Temple 静安寺 opens onto four malls joined by an underground passage, with a department store of over five hundred brands at one end. Beijing's Sanlitun 三里屯 has taken nearly four hundred first stores 首店, a brand's first in the country or the city, in the four years to 2025. Chengdu 成都's core has five big malls that open their doors at ten on a weekend at the same minute, and a panda climbing the outside of one of them that is the city's photograph. Luxury prices in China are about the same as the brand's own website, and the airport duty-free may be cheaper; the report does not send a visitor here to save money.

The floor a visitor might not expect is the Chinese designer floor. On Shanghai's Huaihai Road 淮海路 the cards record a bag brand whose customers are more than half foreign and a shoe brand at a third, and the phrase for the traffic is "reverse purchasing 反向代购": people arriving with a list of Chinese labels. Sanlitun and Chengdu's Taikoo Li 太古里 carry the same brands. This is the one part of the mall where the price is Chinese and the thing is not sold at home.

How long. The cards give two to four hours for a district and an afternoon for the big ones, and the point about the mall is that it is where you go when the rest of the line has worn you out.

05The Street

Are tourist streets in China a rip-off?

Between the mall and the market runs the street, and the street is where a visitor pays for the name of the place.

There are two kinds, and the cards keep them apart. The old commercial street is a city's own: Qianmen 前门 in Beijing with its old-name shops and the magnets of every monument on the central axis 中轴线, Nanjing Road 南京路, Guangzhou 广州's Beijing Road 北京路. Prices there are half fixed, half not; the big shops print, the small ones give a little. The tourist street is the other kind, built or rebuilt around a sight: Nanluoguxiang 南锣鼓巷's seven hundred years of hutong 胡同, the Yu Garden 豫园 bazaar around a Ming 明, 14th to 17th century garden with a sweet shop from 1855, Tianzifang 田子坊's converted lanes where, by the 2025 card, forty per cent of visitors are foreign, Xi'an 西安's Tang-themed avenue that is best after six in the evening when the lights come on. On these the report's own reckoning is that prices run a third to double the wholesale floor for similar things, bargaining is "partly", and the scores are the highest on the page.

That premium is the story tax, and it is worth paying for some things and not others. The six-line test from the second block is the tool. A lacquer 漆器 box from a Fuzhou 福州 workshop stall on a tourist street passes it; the same street's plastic fans do not. The report's advice, which we repeat, is that the shops nearest the gate are the dearest and that walking a hundred metres in changes the price.

The newest thing on the street is the city gift 城市礼物. Since 2025 city governments have been building their own souvenir lines, and the cards record Wuhan 武汉's with six shops and a flagship of over five hundred items, Beijing's with a design competition, Fuzhou's with a shop of its own. These are printed-price, museum-shop-style goods on the tourist street, and they are the safe buy there.

What the street becomes at night is not on this page. When the shutters come down and the stalls go up on the same paving, it is a market, and this site's page on markets has it, with its hours.

06The Museum Shop

Are Chinese museum shops worth it?

The museum shop is the one place on this page where the highest price and the best purchase are the same thing.

It is a recent phenomenon and a large one. The Palace Museum 故宫博物院's product line, drawn from a collection the museum counts in the high hundreds of thousands of objects, made "museum products" a category in China: palace cats 宫猫, roof-beast 脊兽 bookmarks, a calendar that sells every year. The National Museum 国家博物馆's phoenix-crown 凤冠 fridge magnet passed a million pieces sold by the spring of 2025, with queues to the museum door, and the report treats that single object as the proof that a museum can turn an artefact into a thing people line up for. The Shanghai Museum 上海博物馆's Egyptian exhibition drew close to three million visitors and a product line of its own. Ten top museums now sell under one banner on the country's biggest shopping platform, and the category has grown by half each year for three years, by the platform's count.

Prices are printed, low and honest. The cards give a range from a few tens of yuan to a few hundred for most things, with the bulk between thirty and a hundred and fifty; the magnet in question is under a hundred. Nobody bargains. The design is tied to a specific object in the building you have just walked through, which is the whole of the six-line test in one purchase.

The catch is the door, not the price. Every museum's online shop requires a Chinese phone number and a Chinese payment account, so a visitor buys in the building or not at all, and the building requires a booking: the Suzhou Museum 苏州博物馆, in Jiangsu 江苏, by its card, a week ahead. The museum shop is therefore the one purchase on this page that has to be planned like a visit, because it is one.

Which shops. The Palace Museum's, in the palace and on Qianmen 前门. The National Museum's. The Shanghai Museum's, and its Egyptian line while it lasts. Shaanxi History Museum 陕西历史博物馆's Tang 唐, 7th to early 10th century three-colour ware. Suzhou's, with a coloured-ink series and a brocade series that the card calls the arts-school end of the trade. Sanxingdui 三星堆's bronze masks. This site's page on museums has the booking and the closing days; this block only says that the shop is worth the queue.

07The Wholesale Floor

Can a tourist buy at a Chinese wholesale market, and when does it open?

The wholesale market 批发市场 is the floor with no equivalent in the West, and the floor where the price is finally spoken.

The unit is the stall. In the report's description, a stall in Guangzhou 广州's Shisanhang 十三行 is three to five square metres with this week's styles on hangers and the owner taking orders for a factory an hour away; in Huaqiangbei 华强北 a stall is a glass counter that is also a company; in Yiwu 义乌 it is nine square metres of samples. Rent is low, turnover is fast, and that, the report says, is the root of the prices. The same market sells wholesale and retail across the same counter, and the day is split accordingly: the morning belongs to the buyers taking stock by the bundle, the afternoon to whoever walks in.

The hours are the first thing a visitor gets wrong. Shisanhang's cards open the doors at half past six and close the market by half past two, with the packing and shipping filling the afternoon. Shahe 沙河's stalls switch the lights on at four in the morning and do their trade before ten. Hangzhou 杭州's Sijiqing 四季青 opens at five and shuts at half past four; Wuhan 武汉's Hanzheng Street 汉正街 runs from six. Arrive at noon and you have missed the market; arrive at eight and you are in the way of it. The report's own advice to visitors is to come in the afternoon, when a stallholder has time to sell one piece.

The price is a conversation with a vocabulary. The question is not "how much" but "how do I take it 怎么拿", which announces that you might buy a dozen, and the answer is a wholesale price that a single piece will not get. Minimum quantities exist and are not always posted. Of the wholesale cards we hold, most list bargaining as yes and English as almost none; the exceptions are the stalls that already sell abroad. A translation app on the phone, and the price typed into a calculator and turned round, is how most of it is done.

At the bottom of this floor is the surplus market. In Guangzhou's Shijing 石井 the cards record clothes sold by the jin, a few yuan a jin, and single pieces for the price of a coffee, from brand overruns and cancelled export orders. It is the last stop of the supply chain, and the report puts it on the one-day route for that reason, not for the shopping.

08Huaqiangbei

How do you visit Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen?

If a visitor walks one wholesale floor in China, the report and this site agree it should be the electronics street in Shenzhen 深圳.

The scale is the point. By the figures in the report, drawn from Xinhua and the city's own media, Huaqiangbei 华强北 is a square kilometre and a half with a pedestrian street under a kilometre long, over a hundred thousand registered businesses, some thirty-five specialist markets, and more than a million kinds of electronic component on sale. It counts several thousand foreign buyers a day. The first electronics market in the country opened here in 1988 in the building that is still the landmark. The report's phrase is that from a single resistor to a pair of AI glasses, design to export, everything happens within one district, and that nowhere else on earth has that in walking distance.

The half-day route the report designs is the one we would use. Start at Huaqiang Electronics World 华强电子世界 at eleven, when the stalls are open: the ground floor is components and the culture of the one-metre counter; the second floor is the front line, AI glasses, translation earphones, health monitors, much of it not yet on sale abroad. Then SEG 赛格, and the card's instruction is not to linger on the ground floor, which prices for tourists; go to the fourth for laptops, the fifth and sixth for graphics cards and memory, and the high floors to see chips in heaps. Then the accessories market, where a phone case starts at a few yuan and a screen protector at one, and where the report says a visitor is least likely to be overcharged because the goods are standard. Ask "how do I take it 怎么拿", not "how much", and buy ten. Lunch at a Cantonese 广东 tea restaurant. An optional afternoon at the new-phone wholesale halls, with the warning from the card that a cheap "locked" handset needs a workaround a tourist should not attempt.

Two things the cards add. Tuesday to Friday afternoons are the hours when every stall is open and the crowds are thin; and across the road is Huaqiangnan 华强南, thirty-odd markets of second-hand electronics, which is its own afternoon. Foreign cards do not work at the counters, and the phone does.

This is also the block where our two sources disagree. The report scores Huaqiangbei the highest content potential on the page. The Reddit threads we read mention it once or twice. The gap between those is the reason this site writes it.

09Guangzhou Supply Chain

What is the Guangzhou clothing wholesale district like for a visitor?

Guangzhou 广州 is where a Chinese garment is born, and the report lays out a single day that follows one from the design stall to the surplus pile.

The city's figures explain why it is here. By the municipal government's count in our cards, Guangzhou has close to two hundred garment wholesale markets and over thirty thousand garment firms. The fabric district around Zhongda 中大 covers some two and a half square kilometres with more than twenty thousand shops. The Shahe 沙河 cluster puts out over two thousand new styles a day and moves several thousand tonnes of goods, and a sample can be turned round in one to three days. Shiling 狮岭, in the northern suburbs, makes about half the country's bags. The report's reason is the one that runs this whole page: the factories are an hour away, and the market is where they sell.

The day. Shisanhang 十三行 at half past six, the New China Building 新中国大厦, to see the market open, the women's-wear stalls that change their styles every week, and the packing. Shahe by nine, the cheapest women's wear in the country, the supply base for the online shops, and the live-stream studios selling to Vietnam. Lunch where the traders eat. Then the Liuhua 流花 district by the railway station, Baima 白马 and Zhanxi 站西, where the buyers from Russia, the Middle East and Africa come for mid-range brands and the export trade dates from the Canton Fair 广交会. Shijing 石井 by four, where the surplus is sold by weight. An optional second day is the fabric market, which is where a designer goes to find cloth and which the report calls the top of the chain.

Who it is for. The report says buyers, founders, fashion students and people who make content, and it is honest that a general visitor will find the language hardest here of any place on the page. Its own English-gap table puts Shisanhang, Shahe and Shijing at the top of the country, and its advice for Shijing is a local guide. That is what this site arranges, and the last block says so.

Do not drive to Shahe. The card says it in those words.

10The Factory Towns

Where do you buy porcelain, leather, tea and small goods at the source in China?

The bottom floor of the line is a town, not a market: a place where one thing is made and everything in it is for sale.

Jingdezhen 景德镇 is the one a visitor already knows. The porcelain town has a creative district built in old kilns, Taoxichuan 陶溪川, where young makers sell from studios; a former state sculpture factory 雕塑瓷厂 where art-school graduates run stalls and a creative market sets up on Saturday mornings, with student work for tens of yuan and better pieces for hundreds; and the imperial kiln 御窑厂 site with its museum. It also has a village of antique reproductions 仿古瓷, which the report lists among the places where a visitor most needs a guide, for the obvious reason. Making a pot yourself is on this site's page for things you make; buying one is here.

Yiwu 义乌 is the one a visitor has heard of without knowing the name. The international trade city 国际商贸城 is, by the figures Xinhua reported in early 2025, over six million square metres of market with seventy-five thousand stalls and two million kinds of goods across twenty-six categories, and it counts several thousand foreign buyers a day and twenty thousand foreign residents. The five districts are mapped by product: toys and jewellery in the first, hardware and small appliances in the second, stationery and eyewear in the third, socks and knitwear in the fourth. The first district has a service desk for foreign buyers, which is where a visitor should start, and the card gives it half a day to a day.

The rest are seasonal, and the report gives the season. Haining 海宁's leather city 皮革城, an hour from Hangzhou 杭州 by a railway that stops at its door, is an autumn and winter place, coats and fur at prices below the mall and open to bargaining, with weekend crowds the card puts above twenty thousand. Keqiao 柯桥 sells cloth by the metre to the world. Anxi 安溪 is the home of Tieguanyin 铁观音 and the place to buy it is the tea market in April and May or again in October, with an introduction to a grower if you want the farm price. Yixing 宜兴's Dingshu 丁蜀 town makes the purple-clay 紫砂 teapot; Dehua 德化 makes the white porcelain figures; the factory outlets of Jinjiang 晋江 in Fujian 福建 sell the country's sports brands at printed discounts, with the card's example of four items for a fifth of the price.

The two problems are the same everywhere. These are third-tier towns with almost no English, and the thing you buy is often large or breakable. The report's challenge table puts "how do I get it home" beside "how do I speak to them", and this site's answer to both is the last block.

11Bargaining

How do you bargain in China, and where should you not?

Bargaining in China is a floor-by-floor rule, and the first half of the rule is where not to try.

Not in the mall, the brand store, the supermarket, the convenience store 便利店 or the restaurant. Prices there are printed, the report says that trying is taken as rude, and the only question worth asking is whether there is a promotion. Not in the museum shop. On the tourist street, partly: the small shops will move, the old-name brands will not.

Everywhere below that, yes, and the report gives the arithmetic. On the wholesale floor the opening offer is a third to a half of the asking price and the deal closes at half to two-thirds. In the tourist bazaars built for foreigners, the Silk Street 秀水街 and the Pearl Market 红桥市场 in Beijing, the opening offer is a fifth to a third and the deal closes under half, because, in the report's words, foreign visitors are the target of the high first price. Around a scenic gate, open at half. At a night market, half. The report's examples: a pearl necklace marked at a thousand yuan in the Pearl Market that closes at a few hundred; dried fruit at the Urumqi 乌鲁木齐 bazaar that closes at half; an Egyptian visitor in Yiwu 义乌 who took ten minutes to bring a five-yuan fan to three and bought five. This site's own note from the bazaar, recorded on the markets page, is that a craft item there closes at about half to six-tenths of the first price.

The techniques are the ones you would guess, and two you might not. Compare three stalls. Decide a ceiling and open at half of it. Walk away, because the call-back is the oldest move in the market. Buy several. Ask whether cash is cheaper, since some stalls will discount to avoid a payment fee. The two to learn: say "how do I take it 怎么拿" instead of "how much", and let the stallholder type the price into a calculator and type your own price back. Do not insult the goods to lower the price; the report is explicit that this closes the conversation.

And the half of this block that is a warning. The Reddit threads we read are heavier on traps than on any kind of shopping: the tour-group stop at a jade shop, the teahouse invitation, the scenic stall that names a price only after you have picked the thing up. Of the Pearl Market one poster's advice was to go knowing it is fake or not to go. This site's rule for such places is the same as for the sensitive items on the markets page: we say what they are and where they are, and we do not recommend them.

12PreeChina, and What It Is Not

What does PreeChina arrange for shopping in China?

• Almost everything on the top floors of this page can be done alone. The bottom floors are where we come in.
• A half day in Huaqiangbei 华强北, on the route in the eighth block, with someone who knows which floor of which building, how to say "how do I take it 怎么拿", and which counter to skip.
• A day on the Guangzhou 广州 supply chain, from the half-past-six opening at Shisanhang 十三行 to the surplus market at four, with a guide, because the report itself says the language here is the hardest on the page.
• A day in Jingdezhen 景德镇, on a Saturday if it can be managed, for the creative market, with the wheel and the kiln on this site's page for things you make and the pot itself here.
• A day in Yiwu 义乌, starting at the foreign buyers' desk in the first district, with a plan of which of the five districts to walk, because the card's own warning is that a day is not enough to see it.
• Anxi 安溪 in tea season, April or October, with an introduction from the tea market to a grower.
• And getting it home. Large or breakable things from the factory towns need a freight forwarder, and that is arranged with the visit.
• What this page is not.
• Not a tax-refund guide. What we can say is what the report verifies: departure refunds exist in a growing list of cities since 2024, at the VAT rate less a fee, on purchases over five hundred yuan in one shop on one day, within ninety days of departure, and not at individual market stalls. The newer scheme that refunds at the shop counter is reported but not verified here, so it is not on the page.
• Not a luxury guide. The mall block says where the luxury malls are and that the prices are the brand's own.
• Not an online tutorial. The registration hurdles change by the month; the page says which platform is friendliest and how to address a parcel to a hotel, and stops there.
• Not a guide to fakes. The markets that sell them are named once, in the bargaining block, as places to know about.
• Not the whole map. The report covers Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan in a table each; this page covers the mainland. And it is not a page about massage, spas or anything else that happens to be sold near a mall: this site does not cover them, by decision.