Chu Chen smiled faintly. "Please rest assured, ma'am. I'll buy this vase for two hundred and fifty thousand."
The old lady heard this, and the suspicion on her face deepened. Frowning, she asked, "You're not lying to me?"
Chu Chen smiled. "How could I lie to you about this? If you don't believe me, we can go straight to the bank and transfer the money."
Seeing Chu Chen say this, the old lady believed him for the most part. Still, she found it strange and asked, "Then why didn't you say so back at the shop?"
Chu Chen replied, "There are rules in our antiques trade. Since that shopkeeper had said that, if I'd directly said I wanted to buy it, wouldn't that have made him lose face? Besides, what he said was reasonable. Under normal circumstances, no antique shop would be willing to take this vase at your price."
In fact, this had always been a rule in the antiques trade: people in the same line of business could not undermine one another. As the old saying went, "A true gentleman stays silent while watching a chess game." You only needed to mind your own affairs. Interfering in other people's business would only make them resent you.
Generally speaking, when two antique dealers did business, one ran his own shop while the other sold his own goods. They would only say good things about each other and were absolutely forbidden from undermining fellow dealers.
For example, if someone surnamed Wang bought an incense burner from the Treasure Pavilion and took it to the Antique Hall to ask Boss Li for his opinion, Boss Li would happily congratulate him. "What a fine piece! Congratulations on acquiring such a treasure!" Since Wang had already bought it, why make him feel unhappy?