A real surprise

A friend took me to explore the huge Daliushu market in Beijing. I never heard about it, I knew about Panjiayuan, Hongqiao, Pearl Market, Silk Market and some other smaller and less well-known markets. Daliushu – see the map – is in the South East of Beijing between de 4th and 5th ring.
The market is open during the day, till late afternoon and is just simply huge, several buildings and several floors. Prices are incredibly cheap, see the pictures of the clothes where they sell each piece like for 20 and 30 RMB. Immense sections selling textiles, shoes, jewelry, decoration, electronics, kitchenware, professional kitchen equipment, small shops (a lot of Russian imports), birds, crickets, name it.
We also found some real antique shops, in one we chatted for a long time with the owner.

On Tuesday evenings, starting around 4 to 5 pm, there is a vast, mainly outdoors flea market, where you find about anything, antiques, old electronics, camera, watches, old tools, decoration, toys, whatever.
We chose the right day, arriving on a Tuesday afternoon and sticking around to see the evening market. It’s also called “The last ghost market”.

For the whole duration of the visit I was the only foreigner, and no, no any Africans shopping…

I bought boots

Except some Russian dark chocolates I bought nice leather boots, 550 RMB. Those normally sell for way over 1,000 RMB.

Panjiayuan is the most well-known “antique market” (or called flea market or curio market) in Beijing, on the southeast 3rd ring road. I haven’t been there since maybe 15 years. The stores in the market open every day while the street stalls just open on weekends according to Travelchinaguide. More about that market here.