If you go to China for the Olympics, one of the first things you will come to as you visit a site like Tiananmen Square will be dozens of people trying to sell you something, insisting you look and offering to give a good price if you will suggest one.

Americans are used to this in some places like certain clothing stores with hovering salespeople, or car dealers. But when I got to go to China last May as part of a faculty development group from Agnes Scott College, and even though we had had conversations about what to expect, the sheer number of vendors was almost overwhelming. I had been particularly concerned about this because of my fixation on always being honest, and I could not perceive this to be an honest activity on either side.

When I was a young adult, in conversation with my mother, I said I had never lied to her, and she was surprised. But in my childhood, we did not tell lies. Instead, I was told that my early ancestors, the Quaker businessmen of Philadelphia, did not haggle because they believed they should not say something was worth more than it was. That was how we ran our affairs. As he got older, my father wouldn't even give disinformation to my mother in order to surprise her on Christmas.

So the thought of suggesting to people that I would pay one amount, when I actually would pay something else, was very troubling. I learned two things in my shopping experiences in China: that even in haggling, it is possible to be honest, and that it is a process with the important goal of protecting the self-esteem of all players.

We quickly learned how to say "absolutely not interested" in Chinese. Sellers would turn away. When I approached a seller or was approached by one who had something in which I might be interested, I would first ask how much. After the reply, I would say, honestly, that was too much. The question then was, "What are you willing to pay?" This I could also answer honestly. In fact, if I said a price and then didn't change, I would eventually get it for that price. Once I realized that would be the question, I joined in with more enthusiasm.

Then, however, I realized that if I did not bargain a little bit, I seemed to be breaking the rules of my relationship with the sellers. This presented the last challenge to my effort to remain honest, but also my most important lesson. The bargaining was itself a type of community-building that I observed in other ways in China, where both parties needed to leave with their dignity. By not changing my price at all, I left the seller feeling duped.

Thus I came to a new view of the process of bargaining. Saying what I was willing to pay was not the same as saying I would pay that final amount. By then acceding a mere 5 percent above my original price, I allowed the seller to feel he or she had achieved some victory.

I learned in China how, even in today's rancorous "winner take all" world, we are sometimes better off with more negotiation.

> Sally MacEwen is associate professor and chair of the classics department at Agnes Scott College.