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Day 1 PM Muslim Market in Xi'an
http://www.chinahighlights.com/xian/attraction/muslim-street.htm
This area was part of the silk road of trading and has exsisted since the 200 B.C. era. The streets are lined with foods that you can eat or snack on. No scorpions or bugs to eat but certainly items such as chicken feet or the feet in the picture of this blog posting. Big pots and stoves cook food. Cooked items are on display. We wondered how long some of the items on display might have been there so we avoided snacking in the market. See the album for more pictures. Things to buy and bring home are in stalls along the walking street. You will have to barter. Ok maybe barter is a soft word. You will have to haggle many times hard for the one item. It is the way of life. Know your prices before you start or you may pay far more than what the item is worth but then again maybe you would be happy anyway just to have that experience. I did not buy anything here. I now regret I did not look harder to buy as I heard afterwards some of the things you can buy like chopsticks with your name printed on them in Chinese. As far as getting a good price just know they start very high and probably the item is worth only 1/3 of the original price. If you don't like the price or want to get lower then walk away and say you can get it for cheaper some place else but be prepared for someone to try to not let you leave. This area does have many worthy items of purchase for special gifts. They all have calculators to put in the numbers if you do not speak good Chinese or any Chinese at all. This is business in many countries - haggle - know you can trade prices. The muslim people are considered minorities because they are not of Han decent. We were here in daylight but we understand it is also very busy at night time with hagglers, people snacking or eating a meal and just plain looking around. We never felt like anyone was going to try to pick pocket us or steal our bags. You of course should be guarded like any traveling situation.
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