Valerie Hector - The Thoughtful Beadworker

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Panjiayuan the Mighty

Posted on March 10, 2009 | Filed Under Travels in China

From my point of view, one of the greatest developments in China during the last decade or two is the emergence of free marketplaces such as Panjiayuan in Beijing. Or should I say re-emergence. For the Chinese people have long been some of the most astute buyers and sellers on the face of the earth. These impulses were severely curtailed during several decades of the twentieth century thanks to Mao Zedong’s Communist reforms, which discouraged private ownership of goods and property.

Those days are long gone. Panjiayuan is proof that capitalism flourishes in modern China. Every weekend, an estimated 50,000 people visit Panjiayuan, possibly the world’s largest open-air flea market, which extends across the better part of one huge city block. Hundreds of individual transactions take place every hour between people from all walks of life, all of them conducted in mandarin, China’s lingua franca. My limited mandarin language skills notwithstanding, I have gone there several dozen times in the last decade, and now it is one of my favorite places on earth.

Hundreds of vendors take long bus rides in from distant provinces to spread their wares on a few square feet of Panjiayuan concrete, hoping to go home far wealthier than they came. Local merchants also rent space at Panjiayuan during the weekends and run shops in other parts of the city during the week. Business slows during the lunch hour, when vendors order bowls of steaming noodles from nearby food stalls and pull out their thermoses to sip murky green tea.

It would take several pages to describe the vast range of wares on sale at Panjiayuan on any given day. There are thousands of newly-made “antiques” at every turn, and once in a while, the real thing. Also thousands of contemporary products, such as cloisonne enamel bowls, white porcelain figures, stone garden statuary, furniture, books, prints, and so on. And beads of all materials, of mixed quality.

From time to time it’s possible to find old pieces of Chinese beadwork, or old Chinese beads. But prices have risen astronomically in recent years, and hard but friendly bargaining is mandatory. You’ll know you’ve done well when a vendor reluctantly admits that your Chinese is excellent and you bargain just a like a Chinese person! You’ve done poorly when they hand you some small extra item you didn’t pay for….smiling broadly all the while. Mostly I experience the latter.

Even more interesting than the things one can buy are the people one sees…..or bumps into, because the aisles get very crowded with bodies, bicycle carts, little wooden stools and cloth-covered boxes of products. Polite shoving takes over as the only way to progress down the aisle.

While I have never toppled over into a stall, I have come close more than once, and I know the day may come when I lose the fight to maintain my balance. I hope to land on a rare empty spot, not on one of the spiky pottery-shard piles that dominate some of the stalls. Chinese people pick through these piles carefully, culling the perfect shards for jewelry-making or other purposes and thereby recycling the remains of countless hand-painted plates, bowls and cups. Strangely, despite all the culling, the piles at Panjiayuan never get any smaller. There they sit, waiting to cushion a hapless fall.

Needless to say, a sense of humor comes in handy. At Panjiayuan, every fourth or fifth transaction is public. Other people lean in to hear the offers and counteroffers on a single item and lend their opinions without being asked. Word of the final price spreads quickly down the aisle, and vendors with similar items call you over in hopes of a sale.

Arguments are rare but can be heated. I did get into one in 1997, with Miss Yang, an ambitious young vendor who set her prices high and then refused to bargain in the least. She disdained counteroffers of any kind. All these years later her prices are still high but we have become lao pengyou, old friends, and she tries to save pieces of beadwork she thinks I’ll be interested in until I have time to return. We haven’t argued since. I make it a point to see her every time I’m in Beijing; in my world she is a Beijing institution. In wintertime we go out for a meal of huo guo, hot pot, together. We find ourselves reminiscing about the good old days, when intact pieces were easier to find and prices were lower. When my Chinese falters, which is often, her young assistant is always at hand to summon up a few helpful English words. We end up conversing in ”Chinglish.”

A fair amount of what I know about Chinese beadwork derives entirely from my long relationship with Miss Yang and others like her, and the pieces that have passed through their hands. There is hardly another way to learn, because so very few examples are preserved in Chinese or western museums, and no history has been written. Sometimes it feels like a form of salvage work, to be coming so late in search of evidence that has for the most part disappeared. From this point of view, every piece we can find and document is a victory of sorts.

Still more pages would have to be devoted to the pervasive odors of Panjiayuan, such as garlic, cigarette smoke and near the latrines, urine. More on these in a future post perhaps. And the sounds of the place…..you have to be there. Or, if you have 5 minutes to spare, take a look at this tongue-in-cheek video on YouTube, which makes for a decent introduction but can’t begin to capture the nuances:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3xCV7Dh1ps

Below are some photos I took on my last visit, in September of 2008.

Panjiayuan walkway