Byron Bay to Bejing – The Panjiayan Market
To go from Byron Bay with wide open, green verdant space, sparkling fresh air and water to Bejing is quite a physical shock. The air is so polluted that you find you have a coating of grit on your teeth after just a few minutes, which you have to keep wiping off. It is an amazing, sprawling Asian town, absolutely flat with no relief from the dry plain that it sits on.
If you have read Conn Iggulden’s wonderful book about Genghis Khan (Wolf of the Plains) leading the Mongols to victory over the Chin and invading and conquering Beijing, you will appreciate the history and texture of old China even more. Even though we were there on business, my husband and I still had time to see some amazing sights and do some amazing things.
Panjiayuan Market
Keen for the sights and smells of ancient China, we went as soon as we could to the Panjiayuan Market which has grown from an ancient market site into what could be one of the most exciting shopping and bargaining experiences in the world. It is filled with Chinese arts and crafts – and lots of faux and real antiques. It is a step back in time.
The market is cavernous – and filled with professional stall holders and also just ordinary folk who happened to dig up Genghis Khan’s sword in their back yard one day and have bought it down to flog off to augment the family income. There was such an enormous range of items – none of them manufactured, or at least recently (allegedly). The vendors who come to the weekend market at Panjiayuan are from all the 23 provinces of China – and all you have to do is look in their wonderful faces to see the huge ethnic variety of the Chinese vendors.
If you want Museum quality fossils, then you won’t be disappointed. There were some very decent examples of trilobites and large toothed fish fossils – to name but a few. The range and beauty of the fossils on display were incredible, as were the crystals. There were amazing examples of a wide range of crystals, including a single crystal that was about 5 metres high as well as 5 and 6 metre rock eggs, artistically broken open to reveal the rainbow wonders inside – they were like temples. If you have an interest in Geology or rock formations you will find the most stunning items for sale of everything that can be dug out of the ground.
Here too you will find the great and serious collectors of Chinois scouring the market and the adjoining antique wares building. Canny collectors devour the offerings from ancient ivory carvings and magnificent porcelain and jade, to crudely split rocks revealing fascinating fossils. While Panjiayan Market is under cover, it is still open air and in summer it is hot, and in winter it is utterly freezing. Dress warmly – you will need to be exceptionally tough and fit to make it around all of Penjiayuan which is about 50,000 square metres in size! Enormous. Perhaps 5,000 plus individual stall holders.
Just a note about bargaining. The Chinese are skilled bargainers, and they do it with good grace. I advise you to do it with good grace to. Remember thick face, black heart. No matter what your feelings, always smile and be polite. If you really want something, but you are finding them tough on the price, be relentlessly polite, doing a bit of over acting about disappointment, go to walk off, always have a small stash of money in your wallet and say “but that is all I have on me” and show them your near empty wallet. That always works well too. Bully boy tactics don’t work, and at the end of the day, what to you is the price of a cup of coffee is to them a month’s wages. So be fair as well.
But if you need a break go next door to the building where established antique dealers have their shop fronts. There are restaurants and food stalls there – so good to have a quick pick me up so that you can keep exploring. There are 8 or more floors of the most gorgeously restored and preserved items. One particular shop, Lily’s Antiques held the most beautiful items. Lily, who has been a frequent visitor to Australia, and who speaks fluent English was wonderfully helpful. She invited me out to see her warehouse, and thus I was bundled up into an urban van and taken about an hour and half from the market to her warehouse complex (I think I slept all the way I was so exhausted) – which was astonishing. There were 7 or more huge warehouses the size of aircraft hangers (in fact they may have been) stacked to the rafters with furniture and other goods in varying stages of refurbishment and decay.
Curiously, Lilly also sold new Chinois furniture as well, however it was actually more expensive than the antique items. It was fascinating. Whole Buddhist temples had been dismantled and then reconstructed inside the warehouses. Beautifully carved pieces of timber from rotting temple doors restored and remade into outdoor benches. The artistry and craftsmanship of the pieces and the magnificent restoration were outstanding. Yes, I did buy a few items, and they were duly shipped and arrived two weeks after we got home. They were in pristine condition and the shipping costs were negligible really. They are sturdy but beautiful items that function well in our home, and things that we will treasure throughout our life.
The building with the antiques is open 7 days a week, whereas the actual market is only Saturday and Sunday.
Make time to go there, it could be the last you see of old China. The Chinese are keen to get rid of the old and embrace the new, and stores are filled with fluro coloured white goods and cheap plastic – and the craftsmanship and beauty of China is it seems, being lost.
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Franschhoek Accommodation - July 8, 2009
When I visited there last year I patrolled (or should I say shopped) through he Panjiayan Market. It was real great!