happywanderer

Can someone tell me how to get to the Silk Market from Tiananmen Square?

Is this worth going to at least for the experience??

Appreicate your comments.

pooky

As you face the Forbidden City it is to the right but on the same side of the street as the Forbidden City maybe a mile or so down the road.

pooky

Also i love the silk market and the Pearl market.. Both are lots of fun and I love the bargaining on prices. It seems to be a game with them. I was there a couple of weeks ago and back in May. Seems like there were less of the fakes like Louis vitton and Rolex around but still lots of good copys like Tommy Bahama, Kate Spade, Kipling and others.

Bchen

Don't know what Silk market Pooky is thinking of, but the "famed" silk market, which is slated for demolition--and may have already fallen to the "CHAI"-- is further than one mile from tian an Men SQuare. It is on Jianguomen wai Dajie and on the north side of the road, not south like the Square. It is between the friendship store and the US Embassy, but you have to enter the market from Jianguomen wai. They are planning to turn it into an indoor shopping market....figure it will be as authentic as the "outlet malls" in the US.

If you think crowds, overpriced and substandard merchandise in a pick pocket haven is an experience you want to have, by all means go.

Pearl Market (AKA HONG QIAO) near Temple of Heaven and YA XIU near workers stadium are better alternatives.

EdEdwards

There was an interesting story about Silk Alley on the front page of the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. Slated for demolition in order to build a multistory mall, but the merchants are objecting. The WSJ explores the possible motivations of the backers of the plan, including both Chinese officials and the US Embassy (which apparently has taken the position that destroying the old market and relocating merchants into an enclosed multistory mall will somehow allow easier "enforcement" of anti-copy cat laws). On the other hand, my experience in China last month was that the same fake designer items were easily available in the enclosed, more modern malls -- only the shopkeepers went to great lengths to act like they had to be secretive. If you didn't like their displayed wares (and fakes were already on display), they would pull you over immediately to show you whole catalogues of fakes, or cartons with the fake items themselves. My impression was that the secretiveness of the fake dealing was more marketing than real fear of enforcement.