.. what did you purchase there for a gift for yourself or others?

Tea - my favorite pearl jasmine

My husband is going there. I will ask him to bring home some of that tea for me. I have containers of the leaves I use for home and bags I use for work.

Just still wondering what I should ask him for.

Just a note about buying tea in Beijing... Shop around! We were interested in buying tea and visited stores in "touristy" places like Wangfujing, but there prices were outrageous--the cheapest pearl jasmine was 80 yuan/100 grams. That is a total rip-off in the states, let alone Beijing. We ended up buying a ton of tea from the tea shop next to the Marco Polo (where we were staying) and the prices there were SO much more reasonable--80 yuan/500 grams! That was a HUGE price difference. And the tea smelled and tasted just the same! So be careful.

We were just in Beijing, and the one thing I wanted to buy was a comforter/quilt/duvet (?) made from the silk as it was taken directly from the cocoons. It was light as a feather and encased in a silk cover. I did not buy one for 2 reasons--we live in South Texas where we rarely would use such a thing, and I didn't want to lug it around on the Transsiberian train trip we took out of Beijing. (I don't like mailing things home).