China | Beijing | Silk Street Market | Carpets

From Maliandao Tea Street I scarpered over to the notorious Silk Street Market. This is a landmark in Beijing; it used to be an open air market but has now been moved into a large department store-style building. There are reportedly over 1700 shops in the complex and on an average weekday some 20,000 shoppers flood the place, with from 50,000 to 60,000 a day on weekends. The place is infamous for counterfeit brand-name goods and the world’s most aggressive sales people. The management of the complex has provided these helpful English Language guidelines for sales staff in the stores:

I really was not in the market for anything today but I have been coming here for years so I like to chat with the people in the shops where I have bought things before. Despite seeing tens of thousands of customers a week they always greet you like a long-lost friend. First I went to the fabric and tailor shop where I usually have my clothes made (it is impossible to buy my sizes off the shelf in China; difficult anywhere actually). It was nine o’clock on a Sunday morning and the boss of the place, a women in her fifties, was not there. When I asked one of the clerks about her she said, “She’s sleeping; when you are rich you get to sleep in.” I said I wasn’t buying anything, but had come to check out any new fabrics they had in stock. I spent an enjoyable hour lovingly caressing and fondling the heart-stoppingly elegant raw silks, luscious cashmeres, lovely satins, mind-bogglingly magnificent brocades, delectably soft cottons, and sumptuous linens, all the while chatting with the charming to say nothing of knowledgeable staff.

Delectable Fabrics and Lovely Staff

If this isn’t a sight to make your heart palpitate you better check to see if you have not already assumed room temperature.

The gracious Big Boss at the Fabrics Shop, absent on my latest visit.

From the fabric shop—actually one of probably a hundred fabric shops in the complex, a true fabric fondler’s Paradise—I mosied on over to one of the carpet shops I have frequented in the past. Here, as at the fabric shop, the boss—a Mr. Wen—was sleeping in but the eye-dazzling Ms. Chen was on the scene. I have bought carpets here before and Ms. Chen was of course thrilled to the core to see me again.

Here is a rug which I bought at this shop on an earlier visit to Beijing and which now adorns the pounded-earth floor of my hovel in Zaisan Tolgoi.

I told her I was just looking today, but she was more than happy to show me some of the new items they had in stock.

A breath-takingly gorgeous 8oo knot per-square-inch antique silk rug selling for 7500 yuan ($1098)

Another view of same luxuriously opulent carpet

Same magnificent carpet and the equally tantalizing Ms. Chen

Another mouth-wateringly luscious 600 knot per-square-inch antique (dating from the 1920s) silk carpet, this one selling for 2900 yuan ($425)

I did not buy any carpets today but promised the enchanting Ms. Chen I would be back to see her again soon.