The Antique Market

A friend of ours invited me to one of the antique markets in old town Saturday.  I was pretty excited and envisioned a leisurely stroll down a quant little market street, stopping occasionally to pick up the odd rare find that I would later bring to Antiques Road Show and discover that our retirement fund was no longer necessary.  Yep, ambling along sipping hot tea while the smells of steamed buns and freshly cooked meats tantalized; that was going to be us.

The day started out normally enough when we decided to meet at Starbucks to grab a coffee and from there pick up a taxi.  Starbucks in China is stunningly similar to the U.S., with the notable exception of a few additional tea offerings and pastries like Red Bean Scones (sorry Dad for making your mouth water, I’m sure there will be some when you visit).

From there we hit the road, ending up at a part of town called “

Walking Street

”; sounds like a pretty good start to my vision right?  We soon found ourselves in a temple that during the weekend turns into this market.  Remember my Auchan visit?  It was much like that with a sea of humanity milling around and haggling.  The things there ranged from very cool pieces (authenticity doubtful) to things picked from the trash and rubbed with dirt.  I thought it was great actually, mainly because it was just Joey and I with no kids to keep an eye on or Rebecca saying “Really?” to the foundational pieces I was selecting for my new dragon collection.

I have been known to buy things just to be able to sharpen my negotiating skills.  This was a little different experience as every time I picked up something and asked how much it was, a small crowd gathered to see what I was interested in and how bad I was getting hosed.  I picked up a few things where the starting price was 800 RMB and I walked away with them for 100.  Not bad, but I’m sure a local probably could have gotten it for 50.  Oh well, just the chance to haggle in Chinese was worth the money that I over paid.

In the afternoon, the oldest boys and I ran to U-Town, which is a huge electronics mall.  There we had our Wii updated to play Chinese games and blew all of Riley and Reid’s money (Riley’s birthday was Friday; I’ll do a post on that later this week).  This put me over the edge of sensory overload.  Thankfully we went to a restaurant that evening where they had a kids play area, beer and tolerable Mexican food.  I also took a 2 hour nap Sunday to recover.  Pitiful…

Someone this morning mentioned that while in China you hear people reference experiences and you realize that there is so much more to the story.  I also read on another blog that every day in China you see something that you don’t see every day.  Both are true, although I’ve done my best to relay the experience and hopefully the picture of the pet store on a bike is something new to you.  Oh yeah, and the only meats we encountered were the parts of the chicken that they don’t sell in stores in the U.S.   I’ve also been notified that my dragon collection will be displayed at work.