Pan Jia Yuan: Beyond Antiquing

“There is a greater pleasure in picking up a small pearl in an ash-can than in looking at a large one in a jeweler’s window.”

-Lin Yutang, “The Importance of Loving”

The store-keepers stare at all the activity, some with faces of resentment, some with resignation. God only knows how they saved and borrowed to set up shop, suffered Kafkaesque torments to acquire licenses, served patiently in apprenticeships, all to rent expensive faux Qing store fronts at the famed Panjiayuan. But this is a realm of market forces at their most primal, and nature forgives no error.

The draw of Panjiayuan is not necessarily the up-market antiques, for they can be had anywhere, hidden among endless rows of pricey forgeries and cheap fugazies, under acres of glass reflecting fluorescent light. And the stuffy, proud emporiums of certified antiquity admit only a confident few.

The masses, they are drawn to simpler dynamics: open air, bric-a-brac you can inspect fearlessly, vendors who respect your money if not your judgment. Thus do visitor and vendor, native and foreign alike, horde in the vast open square of Panjiayuan. The factory-grade steel pavilion does little to dampen the bazaar underneath it, much as the jungle canopy is ignored by the thriving, scurrying life underneath.

Detritus and desiderata from every imaginable incarnation of China and its children are heaped, arranged, and sold by the peddlers who come at dawn everyday, setting up their floor displays. Their wares draw, but so do their owners, diverse in attitude to business, the customers, an ensemble circus, and the resultant atmosphere, especially on weekends, the Silk Road flea market.

No elbow room to be had. Getting into a “crowds are good” mindset is essential to an enjoyable Panjiayuan visit. After a while, you realize many of the people are as interesting as anything to be had for sale.

Nice gramophones, but no customers. Despite the three kuai per square meter per day that the store owner must pay in rent, the grey brick and close quarters are no match for the appeal of the open bazaar.

Now this is what it’s all about, hunkering down to talk turkey with a peddler. No airs, no pretension. Ten to fifty kuai per day for rent means she can pass the savings on to her customer.

The possible extinction of the roe deer is evidently on the far edges of these fellows’ circles of concern. A Western woman did the inevitable shocked double take while we were waiting around for the shot. Obviously, she hasn’t seen the big cat stalls in Southern China.

Contrasting sales styles. Many of the vendors, like the young woman seated on the left, call to all and sundry to encourage browsing. It generally has the opposite effect. The more experienced vendors are much more like fishermen, knowing not to pull until they get a few tugs.

Forget the bone combs and buddah bracelets. This gentleman claims to be making a nice living trading a niche product – antique pocket watches and clocks. We had to wait an hour for the information – he was busy transacting a big sale, the only such we saw that day. I bought a charming pocket watch with Chinese numbers instead of Roman. It seemed a good half century old, and it was mine – after haggling – for two hundred RMB. I didn’t know how to feel after I saw the “made in Switzerland” on the back of the casing.

This husband and wife team from An Hui specialize in Guanyin statuary. The young man was remarkable for his air of alert intelligence. We speculated that his young bride had sat in front of the Goddess of Compassion in a subconscious gesture of supplication. In any event, she was blocking the aisle.

Will the camera ever match the eye? As the winter sun set early, a shaft of golden light illuminated an otherwise tattered collection of “100% genuine” Qing Dynasty robes. The effect is lost in digital translation, but not in the memory.

Strong late afternoon sunlight makes for scenes of dazzling color and deep contrast. Row after row of merchandise, sparkling thus, is a lot for the eyes to handle. Witness the gentleman in the red jacket.

More contrast. Perhaps the vendors dress monotonously so as not to steal attention from their wares. But in that cold, early winter light, even discount down jackets had their own synthetic luster.

Murphy’s law in effect. Perhaps the most beautiful display, myriad shadow puppets of intricate beauty, demanding close inspection, blocked off by a wall of distracted humanity, a wall that yields not to polite pantomime, but only to shoves and mashed toes.

This vendor spends at least two hours a day lugging his heavy bronze pieces back and forth to the mini-van,as well as loading and unloading them. His commute is another three hours, round trip. Does he mind the exercise? “I’m a businessman,” he says, by way of explication.

Bibliophiles bemoaning the lack of good English titles in China need whine no more. We saw everything from mint coffee table books of Impressionists [180 RMB] to old copies of Rock Guitar magazine [10 RMB each]. Antique books coming apart at the seams, Chinese classic collections, and old maps, combined with the open air, made us swear we’d never set foot in a stuffy bookstore again.

A hazard of strolling Panjiayuan: visual overload, so that one hardly knows what he’s looking at anymore. It is only on examing the photograph that I realize almost all these ladies have their own unique expressions, are individuals. Endless microcosms of idiosyncratic beauty define Panjiayuan and eventually exhaust even the most eager visitor.

*Special Thanks to Kerry Xie for her photography and translation skills.*

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