Streets Ahead
Tuesday, 10 November 2009 01:11
Written by Helen Elfer & Hailey Meng

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Hunting for treasures after dark at three of Shanghai's best night markets

Hongkou Flea Market
Hongkou Flea Market gives you the impression that someone has hastily scooped up all the dusty props from an old Shanghai movie and decided to make a quick buck from them.

Rickety tables and dirty blankets line the streets of Zhoushan Lu and Feihong Lu, displaying the most random assortment of wares you could possibly imagine. Antique knick-knacks make up the majority of what’s on offer and there are some real finds – traditional Chinese instruments, old newspapers (we found one dating back to 1948) and beautifully designed mirrors, telephones and household ornaments.

   
The market kicks off just after 5am while it’s still dark, and by the time dawn breaks the whole area is bustling with customers. The atmosphere is giddy and social, as most people seem to be strolling around the stalls for a chat and a nose-about rather than actually engaging in any serious bargaining.

The surrounding Hongkou area is undergoing massive renovation at present, and in many cases locals are taking advantage of the old empty buildings and ransacking them for anything that might sell. So don’t be surprised to see pieces of skirting board, scrap metal or plumbing gauges on offer amongst the goods.

We also stumbled across seriously unsanitary looking adult products, dolphin-shaped massagers and some rather sexy second-hand shoes in among the piles of shanzai trainers.  

If you’re into vintage accessories or authentic antiques, this is the place to come for much more reasonable prices than some of the other antique markets around town. But it’s worth a visit, even if you’re not buying, just to gawk at the weird and wonderful collections.

Unless it’s raining, the market is held every Saturday and Sunday morning, shutting down swiftly by 7am to avoid commuters. And if you can’t face getting up that early, just make a detour on the way home from your Friday night out...

Tongbei Lu Seafood Night Market
With a name meaning ‘above the sea’ you’d expect Shanghai to deliver cheap fresh seafood, right? And it does, of course, but not only that, it’s also available at any hour of the night here at Tongbei Lu seafood market in the far north of Yangpu District.

Just a couple of blocks away from Yangshupu Lu station (Line 4), follow  the sounds of happy drunken diners towards the smell of barbeque smoke and you’ll find a whole stretch lit up by neon lights. Tongbei Lu seafood market has been operating its fishy business for more than six years, and has become one of the most popular night gathering spots for the local Yangpuers as well as people from other districts and, of course, expats.

There are more than 20 seafood restaurants and countless xiaolongxia and barbeque stalls on this street. Restaurants start to get busy from 7pm every night and the street only becomes peaceful again at around 5am. Fish are brought from Tongchuan Lu wholesale seafood market and coastline towns such as Zhoushan and Chongming Island every morning to ensure the produce is as fresh as possible. However, we didn’t see any actual live seafood here, just hundreds of grubby ice-filled foam containers with fish inside.

The prices are definitely the biggest draw, as it costs roughly RMB10 for a jumbo tiger prawn, RMB78 for a Dungeness crab and RMB90 for an Australian lobster. If you haggle hard enough, you can get these prices down by roughly 15 percent.

Customers either buy up the produce to take home or have it cooked there and then by one of the many restaurants . There are no menus, all you need to do is point to whatever you want to eat and tell the restaurant how you want it prepared. Best of all, it doesn’t cost any more to have it cooked. If you’re feeling adventurous, we recommend the paddlefish (RMB70) and the king rat-snake (RMB100), which may look and sound nasty, but are tastier than they seem.

The street is also home to a few foot massage places which, surprisingly, given the pink lights outside and the late opening hours, really are just for foot massages. So after satisfying your stomach, why not give your tired feet a happy ending too?  

Wenmiao Ghost Market
Don’t be scared off by the name. This gathering might be held in the dark wee witching hours, but the only spirits likely to be lurking are those of literary heroes past. Wenmiao Ghost Market is actually a weekly pre-dawn treasure hunt for insomniac book worms.

Ghost market, the literal translation of ‘Gui shi’ is a secondhand book sale held on Sundays. It’s located on Wenmiao  Lu in the Confucius Temple, kicking off at 3am and shutting up shop at 5am. The name is partly due, of course, down to the spooky opening hours, but also because of the allegedly clandestine methods with which some of the books find their way into the stalls. Rumor has it that some of the rarer finds are stolen from libraries or even nicked from the collections of famous writers. We couldn’t possibly comment!

But we’ll say one thing: A frequent customer bought a set of would-be expensive art theory books for around RMB30. They were very old and well worn, and when he opened them up back home he found not only a chop from the personal collection of a famous American-Chinese writer, but hundreds of his diligently scribbled notes too.

Wenmiao Ghost Market has been running every week for over three decades now (depending on the weather). Book sellers start to appear one by one at around 3am every Sunday morning. Some bring their own vans, while others just carry enormous sacks of books on their shoulders. Generally, the book-loving customers  are already anxiously waiting inside the temple grounds with their torches on, hoping to be the first to discover rare or out-of-print books, or special bargains.

And bargains you can definitely find here. Books are unbelievably cheap, from only RMB0.5 to RMB4. Of course, if the books are really valuable, the price is much higher, but on the whole you won’t be expected to pay more than RMB10 a book. We found a stall of RMB2 60s-80s vintage Chinese comic books and early propaganda posters, as well as a mysterious van full of brick-thick kung fu novels (RMB4) for martial arts fantasists. Other collections on offer ranged from the rather niche – a Russian dentist biography – to the, well, less niche, such as an assortment of Japanese Playboy copies.

When you get tired of shopping, hit up the Wolf Barbeque restaurant (184 Wenmiao Lu, by Xuqian Jie) at the end of the street, which stays open until dawn for the hungry literati. Find yourself a seat, and order a few meat kebabs and a bottle of cold Tsingtao while getting stuck into the book booty of your treasure hunt. You never know, the ghost of Confucius might just be lurking around to keep you company.

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