I am not a haggler. I don’t like to shop. I know what I want. I go to Target or Office Max and I get my white socks and printer ink. If I need dressy clothes, I have a favorite store that’s a bit pricey, but I know the salesman and he knows what I want.

That’s my shopping style.

So, it was with a great deal of discomfort that I embarked into the Chinese world of shopping Tuesday morning, my first foray into hand-to-hand commerce.

I always go shopping one day during an Olympics to bring home a gift for my wife. In the old days, it was to reward her for the battle pay of being a single mom to two boys. Now that we are empty nesters, I buy the gift solely for affectionate reasons.

Unfortunately, I have no taste. So I always ask a female sportswriter colleague to accompany me and help me choose. Rachel, my gift consultant, is, besides being a fine journalist, a shopper par excellence.

Today we subwayed to the HongQiao Pearl Market with five floors of products that go from junk to $10,000 pearl necklaces. My price point was somewhere in between.

Shopping there is a contact sport. Walking down the narrow corridors between the various stalls of fans, chopsticks, statues, vases, rugs, etc., salesmen and women try to lure you into their tiny areas of sales and profit.

They pull out calculators, place a number on it — 100 RMB, or about $14 — and then urge you to input your own number, say, 50. Then the bargaining begins, much like Gene Upshaw and Roger Goodell.

As Rachel and I explored in pursuit of a sophisticated gift for my spouse, I stumbled upon the one thing that I’d be prepared to haggle over. It was a water-stained first edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao. It’s a tiny book. But it was published in 1966 and, according to the salesman, was one of only 1,050 first printed.

He wanted 350 RMB, or $50. That was too much, even for me, a former Maoist.

I tapped 100 into the calculator, feeling like the general manager of the Kansas City Royals. The salesman moaned.

“No, no.”

He input 250 into the machine.

I countered with 200.

Deal. For less than $30 I got an original Little Red Book, sort of like a Barry Bonds rookie card.

Haggling is fun.

But what would Chairman Mao think?