BEING SOLICITED: Bargaining with enthusiastic street merchants is all part of the experience of a trip to Yangshuo's popular Xijie commercial street

Anyone who's been in China for more than five minutes knows that bargaining is a very prominent part of the Chinese culture. But nowhere is this more striking than in a tourist-oriented location, and especially during its holiday season. Take Yangshuo for instance. It is a stunningly beautiful little county 20 km from Guilin in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, a place that I was lucky enough to spend a week in over the recent summer holidays.

Part of the charm of Yangshuo is the almost constant offers of products and services, and, of course, the inevitable bargaining that goes with it once you express interest in something. It's fairly common knowledge that anything without a price tag is fair game for a haggle--and in Yangshuo, almost nothing has a price tag.

Having said that, if you know what you're doing, and if you know approximately what you should be paying for a given item or service, you can get right into the spirit. Check out some of these figures--a hat I bought went from 30 yuan ($1=6.85 yuan) to 10 yuan; a pack of postcards went from 15 yuan to 5 yuan and even a haircut dropped from 40 yuan to 20 yuan. Excursions are not exempt from bargaining, as I found out when I eventually paid 60 yuan for a day trip to some nearby caves from the original 90 yuan offered. Even more drastic was the cost of the hotel space... with the indispensable help of some local contacts; I was able to get the hotel from 218 yuan a night to just 70 yuan. Talk about a discount!

Everywhere you went, there was someone trying to sell you something, sometimes making a beeline for you and often surprisingly good flogging off anything from boat trips, bicycle rentals and various souvenirs and trinkets.