This spontaneous market came into being in 1992 as a roadside market. As trade in folk antiques and handiwork grew, it had become a large antique and handiwork market spreading folk culture in 2002. Many Chinese antique collectors believe that they started their career in Panjiayuan. A visit to the market has become as important a part of a foreigner’s tour in Beijing as the Great Wall, the roast duck, and the Palace Museum.

Panjiayuan Antique Market - Photo by Xinhua net

The shops in the market are open every day, while the stalls operate on weekends. This is the most attractive antique market in the country. On weekends the number of customers reaches 60,000~70,000 a day, including over 10,000 foreigners. Here tourists with different skin colors, speaking different languages, from different classes, and having different beliefs are intermingled. Dozens of important foreign politicians, such as Hilary Clinton, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, Romanian Prime Minister Nastase, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga, and Thai Princess Sirindhorn have visited the market and bought things here. Some of them spend a very long time here, stopping before every stall.

The market has the greatest variety of collected articles in the country. Common kinds for sale are: ancient-style furniture, traditional stationery, ancient books, paintings, calligraphic works, old books, agate, jade, porcelain, Chinese and foreign coins, bamboo, wood, or bone carvings, shadow play masks, Buddhist articles, ethnic costumes, and relics of the Cultural Revolution.

The market is the largest distributing center of folk handicrafts, including snuff bottles made in Hengshui, Yangliuqing New Year paintings, embroidery made in Jiangsu, wood carvings from Dongyang, stone carvings from Quyang, shadow play paraphernalia from Shandong, porcelain and crystal ornaments from Jiangxi, boccaro wares from Yixing, bronze wares from Shaanxi, costumes from Yunnan, Tibetan Buddhist articles, white jade from Xinjiang, and Jiaozhi pottery from Taiwan. These folk handicrafts are gathered in the market before being distributed all over the world.

In 2004, at the prize-awarding ceremony of the first Annual Top Ten Lists of Collection in China, the market was elected one of the top ten antique markets in China.

Address: No. 18 Huaweili, Chaoyang District, Beijing

Dubbed as the largest secondhand market in Asia, the Panjiayuan Flea Market is a must-go place of Beijing, following the Great Wall and Beijing Duck Restaurant. 

People say that there are three things you can't leave Beijing without trying: climbing the Great Wall, eating Beijing Duck and visiting the Panjiayuan Flea Market. While everyone is very aware of the significance of the first two "must-dos", the latter remains something of a mystery to the average tourist.

The Panjiayuan Flea Market is located at the west side of the Panjiayuan Bridge on the Southern part of the capital's East Third Ring Road.

The market opens only on weekends and operates in a wide-open space, with shops and ground stalls co-existing. On average, some 40,000 to 50,000 people wander through the market every day it's open, burrowing through millions of trinkets with their deft hands and meticulous eyes. The market's annual trade value can reach up to hundreds of millions of yuan. Panjiayuan is a Mecca for collectors, and many foreign tourists can be seen browsing around in the market, searching for the perfect souvenir to bring back home. this means that most of the peddlers here can bargain in English. Even Hilary Clinton paid a trip here during her husband's formal visit to China in 1998.
 

Frequent visitors to the market normally arm themselves with a torch before going there. This habit usually belongs to the most hardcore group of visitors. The reason they bring one? So they can have a detailed look at the items at…4am, when the market opens! Wondering why the market opens so early? Here it goes: tracing back in history, there was a market called the "Ghost Market" which had it origin during the late Qing Dynasty. Then the families of some aristocrats fell on hard times and in order to make a living, they had to sell off some of their valuable things. However, as such actions were perceived as being shameful, they preferred to bring their goods to the market at around 3 to 4 in the morning. At the same time, people with dubiously acquired items also found this was an ideal time for them to get such goods off their hands. Thus came the "Ghost Market". And the "Panjiayuan" was originally quite similar.

At Panjiayuan, stories abound that people who bought an article for a low price later found out that it was worth a fortune. One person bought a sword for 15 yuan, and sold it for 150,000 yuan; another one bought a plate for 300 yuan, and it turned out to be worth of 370,000 yuan. Legends like these drum up a significant amount of business for the peddlers, but let the buyer beware, there is also a good deal of Fool's Gold lying around!  (Report from China Radio International,  March 30, 2004)