Because it is a holiday, many of the stalls were closed but several vendors had wares laid out on the ground – mostly jade, some pottery, old coins and such. The atmosphere is typical of a market here – very laid back, with vendors sleeping or playing cards. Besides the outdoor area, there is a large multistory building full of dusty stalls. One of them had quite a few Shu artifacts and bronze. It was very neat to walk around in, but places like this make the language barrier so frustrating – I would really like to understand this stuff more, ask about it and converse about it, but can’t.
I also walked back to the Songxian Bridge curio art city, an art market between Dufu’s cottage and the Green Ram Temple. This place was fantastic – lots of high end and low end stuff, artists working.
Some Chinese cubism:
I found a jewelry store packed with pieces that did not look Chinese at all, with different stones – turquoise and carnelian. I recognized the ‘om’ symbol on some of them. I asked the vendor about one type of ornament but couldn’t understand his answer except that everything was from Tib*t. He was also Tib*tan and was telling me good places to visit in China (using Sichuanhua - Qinghai province is ‘hao de hen’). I will definitely return to that store, it was great.
There was one guy doing fabulously detailed pictures as wood burnings. He had a tool that looked a bit like a dull chisel on the end. The pictures he could make with such a rough looking tool were amazing. One of the neater shops was full of Commun*st memorabilia – there were large portraits of Marx, Engels, Ma*, Len*n, and Stal*n. The shop also had sunny triptychs of workers, peasants, and people gathered in a circle contentedly studying a red book.
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