Tips for Your Serendipitous Panjiayuan Tour

Panjiayuan was just a tiny suburban village of Beijing until 1992 when it was transformed into China’s largest flea market following the marketable trend for antiques. It became so famous that even foreign dignitaries would stop by this place whenever they came to visit Beijing.

However, Panjiayuan is a hotchpotch, with tales of ‘serendipities’ mixed with much more stories about cheatings for the beginner and misjudges of the professional. Someone said that there are two places in Beijing ever crowded with people: one is Tiananmen where heads are up to see flag-raising, and the other, Panjiayuan, down for treasures. So what will be in store for you while you are inside?

1、Most of the antiques are fake

A dazzling array of beautiful things you can ever imagine! But for cognoscente, 90% are counterfeits.

If you are a green hand and don’t want to be cheated, you have to stick to one rule – just take everything as unreal and place your order only for fake stuffs even if they are real, so long as it can make you happy. 

Panjiayuan is a pit for beginners where they can take their best lectures. Here, you can gain some hands-on experience on all kinds of counterfeits and crafts, quite helpful in giving a boost to your level of appreciation, rather than the digital form of arts.

2. Never buy any ‘weird stuff’ here!

What will be the stuff Panjiayuan has never been short of? From my point of view, it should be ‘great masters’!

Panjiayuan is a place to have bred many talents, tenanted not just ‘Five Heavenly Kings’ so insanely popular in the field of playthings, but quasi-god-existing merchants as well. And not about how good are their articles, but their weird stuffs quite different from others.

Let us take a look at a corner of Panjiayuan and see how many ‘unusual’ articles for amusement!

Hey, bros! Photo shooting, come, say cheese!

Whose lions are these? Could they ear up?

The legendary duckbill pot?

Japanese cartoon ‘Doraemon’ as an antique, is it in a time lapse, or are we considered not knowing this comic film?

3. There are real goods, provided that you take it as a ‘junk market’.

With all the shams, you may still want to try your luck on something real, for example, the works of modern celebrities …

Since it is a ‘junk market’, we should eye on something really old, not ‘antiquated’. For example, the bamboo basket shown in the picture above was used to fetch water from the well – hang it at the hooked rope tied to the well’s crank handle, turn the handle to let the rope downward until the basket touches the well water and get the water up – it was a household item then, and now, it should be regarded as an old stuff. Besides, it’s real!

Mi Dou (rice bucket) is an ancient way of measuring rice, like the modern weighing scale. In olden times, the measuring unit for rice is ‘sheng’, and one bucket (see the photo above) is 10 ‘sheng’, equivalent to 6.5 kilograms. Mi Dou had been in use for a thousand years until the modern era. Therefore, this one is unquestionably a kind of antique and there are many you can find in Panjiayuan, one of the few genuine curios.

In the above picture, you can figure out it is a drill barrow from its possible use. Farmers at that time had already learnt to use tools, instead of hands, for seeding, and this drill barrow was so exquisitely made, given the conditions of no electricity and modern technologies, that it typifies the wisdom of the Chinese ancestors. The drill barrows in Panjiayuan are real.

Let’s take a look at this metal deadbolt, used to lock the door from behind like the door lock nowadays. This kind of things are commonly seen in Panjiayuan, most of them are real.

Dou, used for measuring rice too, is quite different in shape from Mi Dou mentioned above but has the same function. And a basket, a kind of ‘lunch box’ brought by peasants to the fields, was commonly seen in the rural area before.

4、Use more legs less hands

Goods selling on the ground might be fakes, but if you accidentally break one of them, that one will be purportedly real, and you have to pay for it! So if you tour around inside, make sure not to use your hands, as much as possible just look… In case you really need to touch a thing, make sure to touch, hold and place it back gently. After standing up, clap your hands to show to the stall owner that you don’t hide anything.

A good frame of mind is important. If you are there to find something profitable, you will be disappointed, to get some bargains, you can get your wish granted, and to look for fun, yes, you will get more than you’ve expected: far too many interesting things!

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[Images via 文玩老炮儿，文玩说大叔，墨轩文玩，百度]