Billionnaire and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wrote he was once warned in these words before a business deal: “If you look around the bargaining table and you don’t see the sucker, guess what? It’s you.”
It is always hard to give a cold, hard look at a situation in which one is personally involved, and identify that the sucker is… oneself. The French have a saying for it: “It’s easier to see the straw in your neighbor’s eye than the beam stuck in your own.”
To illustrate this point in the context of Beijing shopping, I’ll tell you a little story — a daily event here, it could easily be your own story.
The Half-Bad Antique Scenario
China has a recorded history of 5,000 years. One of the two oldest civilizations still alive on Earth. (India being the oldest one.)
It is quite common for travelers like you to want to buy a couple of small antique objects from the multiple markets found in Beijing.
Let’s just say that you set out to buy an antiquity: a vase, a plate, or some old embroidered piece of clothing. Or even a little bronze or jade statue you could carry easily in your luggage.
Your travel guide recommends paying a visit to the Panjiayuan Antique Market. Your tour guide offers to lead you there.
Panjiayuan is an interesting curiosity in itself.
Packed in a closed area the size of half a football field, hundreds of small vendors display their goods on the ground, like in a flea market.
Tens of thousands of objects are on offer: from Buddhist items to Mao’s Red China memorabilia, beads and silver jewelry, watches, old distressed furniture, painted vials, small bronze statues, jade chopsticks, stone animals… You name it, the choice is enormous.
Image courtesy of CCTV
At the Panjiayuan Antiques Market, tens of thousands of objects are on display
Around the grounds, more conventional shops offer jewelry, stones and crystals, jade, calligraphy works and accessories, paintings, wood carvings, cloisonné work, bigger antique statues, porcelain ware, and bone china.
Panjiayuan: Distressed wooden carved panels
Panjiayuan Antique Market: flea vendors and traditional shops sell side-by-side
This is truly Ali Baba’s cave. Antiques all over the place!
You splurge on it, and blow a good half of your souvenir budget then and there. You buy a ravishing antique Buddha statue ($300); a vase dating from the end of the 19th century ($2200, a tad high but the vase is just so beautiful, and it’s already 150 years old!); and Mao’s Little Red Book in its original edition ($30, a priceless relic of the hardcore Communist era!).
A good day of shopping!
And truly it is… in regards to the value of the experience itself.
But as far as the value of the ‘antiques’ you just bought is concerned…
Congratulations! You just got hoodwinked again!
Get hoodwinked at Panjiayuan
Yes you did, Brett, yes you did…
Optimistic estimates peg at 70-80% the probability of being sold a fake antiquity in Panjiayuan. The more realistic observers quote a figure of 98%.
Does this make your ‘Qing dynasty’ vase any less beautiful? Not really. But does it make it worth less than $2200? You bet it does.
And is this Buddha statue so antique after all? Not so much. In fact, it was buried for a couple years in a backyard which gave it its nice distressed aspect. Let’s be honest: it would not have looked as good two years ago when its factory paint was still wet.
Before: at the Buddha Factory
After: The miracle antique Buddha statue. Two years to make it look like a 1500 year-old antique.
A Good Samaritan would have definitely gotten you rid of your illusions, and bargained much harder for you with the vendors.
But there is a silver lining to every cloud: at least you got your money worth of exotic experience!
And there is another silver lining…
Indeed, if you did not expect this half-bad situation, you would definitely find yourself in Upsh** Creek in the next one!
This is a real-life, bone-chilling story. It was published in 2003 by Time Magazine in its Asia edition.
