Panjiayuan Antiques Market

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.