Chased Away by the Syndicate

Just about every year for the last seven or so, a section of our neighborhood becomes an open-air market for Christmas trees. Enterprising ladies from the countryside roll up with potted pines for sale.  They look like Christmas trees.  Doing the obligatory walk-around the base you can find trees that look good from most every angle.  Oddly they do not smell much like anything.  Certainly when you rub the needles between your fingers and bring them to your nose, nothing much pine-like is stimulated.  The frozen canal we’re standing by does, however have a strong bouquet. 

It’s been decades now.  These pine merchants figured out a while back that for four weeks during the year, regular old pine trees that would normally cost ten or twenty yuan, can miraculously be sold for five hundred yuan to foreigners who all seem to need to buy them at this one time, mid-winter.  The difference of a twelve inch stalk, rising up from the top of a tree is all that’s required to quote a price another two hundred yuan more. 

 In years past I can remember bidding wars that were possible between different vendors. This year the trees on both sides of the street appear to be under the same overlord's management.  No one selling the trees seems to be particularly concerned with my looking at their trees or the ones potted by anyone else.  One could imagine newcomers who arrive and set up trees, being chased away by the syndicate, as this is certainly the location, that everyone knows.    

 

I talk to one or two young ladies about how much trees are going for this year.  One crimson-cheeked lady in hear early twenties, shows me her book.  There is ledger written in pencil  showing that some family has paid 900 yuan for at least one tree.  This particularly impresses neither my nephew nor me.  “You can write anything you want in your book, and we’ve no idea how large that tree was,” my nephew offers with a smile.   After a bit of discussion it becomes clear what the proper negotiating range for these trees roughly is.  I’m not interested in fighting to the last yuan. 

I have to pause the sale though, because if I buy this tree without my younger daughter’s engagement, there will be holiday incident.  My nephew will return later with her.  “Have her choose between these three here and have her negotiate it down to no more than 450RMB.  That’s about eighty dollars.  Is that what a two-and-a-half-meter Christmas tree costs back home these days?  I remember of course that they were, once upon a time, much cheaper.  But I can imagine that inflation has caught up with this, just like Halloween pumpkins, especially in any urban area. 

Later two gentleman bike our tree over on a three wheeled cart.  They carry the tree, the soil, the pot and . . . these guys are ready for me, a little water dish, which is extra but clearly essential.  I move a carpet and have them put it beneath the tallest point in the room.  My wife will likely want to move it, but for now, it looks just right.  Tipping my guys twenty yuan the girls and I settle down to consider what we’ve done.