Ever since I was a young girl, it has been one of my dreams to set up my own shop or stand. In my mind selling the used stuff is not only to save space and get money, but also would give me a sense of accomplishments. This dream didn’t come true until one day this year.

A flea market opened just near my house last Nov. It opens on the first Sunday of each month. Actually it’s not a real flea market. People do not only sell used stuff there. Most of the sellers have their online store and sell new stuff. On average there are about 100 stands every time and this number is increasing. Often I go there for shopping. I can always purchase some interesting, useful, cheap and even surprising stuff, for example bathing soap made in Korea, tasteful raisins from XinJiang Province, nice-looking and cheap clothes, cute toys for my son. I started to love it there.

One morning when I woke up, an idea suddenly came to me – why not sell the used stuff there? I have so much stuff that I don't need any more but I hate to just throw them away. Then I immediately got up and found a paper to list all I have. Two days later it was the time for the market to open again. During those two days I was so excited because I felt my dream for many years will finally come true. But a question came to my mind – am I allowed to set up a stand there? It seemed that those sellers were organized by someone official. But I decided to try first anyway.

April 4^th was a day with nice weather, sunny and a little windy. I got up very early and packed all of the stuff into two big bags. When we got there a lot of people were already there. We put everything on a mat and tried to organize them. We also brought a folding stool. When I sat on it I felt I looked like a professional stand seller. My son was even more excited than me. He sat on the mat and shouted to the people: come on to take a look, come on, everything is cheap.

Attracted by my son, immediately a few people stopped by and took a look. Among them was a person photographing. I even felt a little proud – was he a reporter and would I be shown on TV? But several minutes later a fact denied my guess. This photographer brought another person. This person politely told me that he was the organizer of this market and gave me his name card. He also told me that if I wanted to set up a stand here I needed to pay 10 yuan as the administrative fee. Finally he told me the process to register for future activities and encouraged me to be the new stand holder. Then he gave me a white sticker with 88 as my stand number. I stoke it to my arm. Number 88 is a lucky number in China. I thought it indicated we would have a good business day. After all that was done, I told my husband proudly that we were legal business operators now.

The first person who started the inquiry was a man around his 30’s. He showed interest in the laptop bag. I priced it at 40 yuan. But he said it was too expensive and picked a lot of problems. Actually those were not real problems. I knew it was just his strategy to lower the price. Of course I said no and explained to them these were not real problems. I also told him this laptop bag has many good points. Finally it seemed that the bargaining had failed. This person left but came back after a while as I expected. He said he had only 24 yuan and couldn’t give me more. I still said no. Then he changed his strategy and turned to bargain with my husband. My husband didn’t want to continue arguing with him so he just agreed. This was our first deal of the day, low price but still a good start.

The second person was a woman with the age of my mother. She had interest in a pair of red sports shoe. They were DoubleStar shoes and looked beautiful. They didn’t fit me well so I only wore them several times. They still looked very new. I paid 180 yuan when I bought them. I set the price at 40. She just cut it to 25 yuan and insisted that it was not new. After a quick bargain I agreed to this price. She looked satisfied and took it away.

After that we sold a basket for washing vegetables, a new small speaker with clock, a used cordless phone and a pair of my son’s shoes. Motivated by this my husband went home to move many of his old books into two boxes but didn’t sell any the whole day. Maybe the people who shop there don’t like books much.

At noon my husband and I took turns to have lunch and watch the stand. When I was home I could see our stand clearly through the living room window. We are on the 3^rd floor. There were much fewer people in the afternoon. Most of the deals were made in the morning. By the whole day’s business we gained a total of 83 yuan. Even though it’s not much it did give us a very interesting and memorable experience. Besides myself another person who was so happy was my son. He was shopping in this market the whole day and purchased so much stuff: a big balloon with cartoon, a set of toys and a big police car. He even used up the money we gained. As an award to ourselves we had a nice dinner in a newly opened hot pot restaurant. Oh, a really different and wonderful day!

Written on 5/25/2010