Panjiayuan Flea Market
Panjiayuan Flea Market is located at the south east of the 3rd Ring Road. It is an open air market, opened 7 days a week, but the best time to go is on weekend. The market was famous for antique dealings about 10 years ago, today it is famous for the big collections of handicraft works from the neighbouring provinces, but not entirely in the sense of antiques, you can still get some real stuff, but not very easy.
Take it as a fun place for half day shopping, or maybe just a visit to a museum, but not as a serious real antique shopping place, especially when you were told that the stuff you are staring at is from Song or Tang Dynasty…and if you really want to buy it, they will have a story on it, the only thing you can rely on is your own sharp eyes.
The market sells almost anything you can imagine, from the big vase to menus of old cameras, or personal letters, even old private diary, it could be roughly categoried into: porcelain, jade or gem, furnitures, wooden carving, clock (watch), stamps, coins, painting(mostly Chinese paintings), second hand books, newspaper and magezines, old photos (sometime you can find old family album), collections from the Cultural Revolution (Mao’s red books, notebooks, posters, bags)… all of the above could be: seemingly very old or authentic stuff, replica, or just today’s handicraft work. The price may vary a lot from just 10 to several hundres or thousands yuan.
Photos from the market:
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