A multistory mall that has just one main featured product—pearls—of differing color quality. Treat it a visit as a fun exercise rather than a serious pearl-buying expedition. The pearls are presented in hundreds of ways, and those with Chinese-style designs and motifs make smashing souvenirs or gifts, regardless of their provenance or quality. This is New China in action, where the state and a free market collide. The stallholders appear to be entrepreneurs, instead of state employees, judging by the way they persuasively approach shoppers with well-honed spiels, in the kind of stilted textbook English that is so pervasive in China. Still, all you need to be an effective entrepreneur is a decent sales pitch and the ability to convert from renminbi (it translates as “people’s money”) to dollars in a flash. Some of the individual-stall jewelry designs are funky, while the upper-level stores are swankier places for more serious pearl connoisseurs. Along the sides of the cavernous floor are closed-in stalls selling memorabilia and knickknacks.

Only in modern-day China would you find a huge bust of Mao Zedong parked next to the Buddha. It is a conundrum how Mao has managed to maintain his halo, at home and abroad, even having his portrait hanging over the Forbidden City, while other 20th- century dictators such as Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot are reviled. The market is a hodgepodge of stuff, none of it particularly valuable, ranging from giant stone and marble statues to copies of Mao’s Little Red Book and pretty much everything in between. There is also a furniture section, with a few stores advanced enough to offer shipping services. Unfortunately, on the market fringes are hawkers selling beautiful animal pelts—tiger skins and the like—from endangered species. China is supposedly clamping down on such nefarious activities, but like the copyright pirates, they seem to operate with impunity.

Tea lovers will be in heaven on this street of tea stalls where you will find hundreds of teas. Remember that green tea is best in summer and black tea in winter. Beijingers would never order green tea in winter as it is considered a cooling beverage.