Chongqing was an industrial and wartime capital, and a great deal of the twentieth century ended up in its cupboards. The second-hand trade here is less about fashion than about objects: markets and clusters of stalls selling old furniture, chinaware, radios, cameras, watches, coins, banknotes, badges, stamps, books, toys and the household goods of the 1950s to the 1980s. For anyone interested in recent Chinese material culture, these markets are considerably more interesting than the tourist antique streets.
What turns up
The stock is unpredictable but the categories are consistent: enamel mugs and basins, thermos flasks, tin lunch boxes, alarm clocks, transistor radios, tape recorders, sewing machines, bicycles, wooden furniture and stools, bamboo and wicker, old posters and prints, cigarette cards, ration coupons, badges and medals, school exercise books, abacuses. Alongside the Chinese material there is the Soviet and Eastern European equipment that came in during the 1950s, which turns up in cameras, watches and instruments. Clothes are a smaller part of the trade: workwear, padded jackets, military surplus and a certain amount of 1980s and 1990s fashion.
Where to look
The main concentration is in the older districts away from the shopping centres, where dealers work from shops and stalls along a few streets, with the busiest trade at weekends. There are also sporadically held flea markets and the informal stalls that appear near the antique and curio markets and around the university districts. Some dealers specialise - coins and banknotes, watches, cameras, jade and stone - and they are the ones worth talking to if you want anything specific. Bargaining is normal and expected, and opening prices should be treated as an invitation rather than a figure.
Practical notes
Go in the morning, particularly at weekends, and take cash since not every dealer has a payment app. Check anything electrical carefully before buying, and assume that old electronics will need work. Be sceptical of anything described as antique, particularly bronzes, jade and porcelain, where modern reproductions are sold as originals; if the price seems too reasonable, that is the reason. For coins, banknotes, badges and printed material, the markets are a good source of genuine and inexpensive items, and Chinese export rules on cultural property apply if you are buying anything of real age.
