Jeff Mills Coastal Vacations Club Blog

Beijing really is a shopper’s paradise, with tens of thousands of old and new stores serving both residents and tourists. But one street in particular is right next to some of Beijing’s most famous hotels, and it keeps the style of the old.

Imagine such a place where you will be offered the sense of age, where you can get lost in a sea of antiques and traditional Chinese handicrafts. Beijing’s Liulichang Street enjoys a history that goes back to the early Ming dynasty in the 1500s, and there’s no shortage of artisans around here.

For hundreds of years, the street remained one of Beijing’s busiest shopping venues. Today people walk through Liulichang to shop for paintings, antiques, fans, jade, embroideries, tea sets, and all kinds of Chinese ethnic items.

Sounds like the place you’ve been looking for!

Here are some of the shops:

Pin Hu Tang – A Good Cup of Tea Made Easy

This quaint shop at the west end of Liulichang Street is where big-time tea lovers go for authentic Yixing purple clay teapots. It’s not far from the Haige International Hotel. 

Yixing teapots are said to be able to improve your tea by allowing tea aromas to build up right in the walls of the pot. The key is the unusual material they use for the pots: Yixing purple clay, which has micro pores and as such is absorbent.

The clay is unique to Yixing, from where their collection of teapots are crafted. The owner himself is an accomplished Yixing teapot maker.

The designs of their teapots are pretty unique. In their shop you will find shapes modeled after pumpkins, gourds, stumps, castles, and so on. And you will find skillful engravings on these teapots: a scene showing harmony between man and nature, a quotation from an ancient love poem, or an auspicious animal mounting the lid to entertain your eyes…

These really are things you won’t find in your back home! That might be why so many tourists would like to spend their travel dollars here.

Gu Miao Hua Yuan –- Pristine Beauty of Flowers Live On Your Walls

This interesting little shop is tucked away in a 600-year-old building and offers exceptional Chinese flower paintings that have found their way into the homes of many Beijingers. It is just a short cab ride from Hwa Apratment Hotel.

In the shop, you’ll find paintings of plums, orchids, chrysanthemum, as well as bamboo; they all are the work of our master - Mr. Xie.

Mr. Xie owns this shop. He paints a range of flowers, but what he is best at is peony, the flower he loves the most. He’s spent no less than ten years observing the flower in order to create works that are true to life.

That isn’t an achievement just any one can accomplish!

Upon your request, Mr. There are both frame and easy-to-take scroll works offered in the shop.

Qing Ci Lan Ting – A Lovely Touch To Your Home

This interesting little shop with an old-fashioned façade carries a large collection of celadon products made in Longquan, a southern Chinese town knows as the hometown of celadon.

There you will find a nice array of products with designs that are rarely seen outside of China. For example, a bowl is engraved with a pair of fish that are unique to a small river in Longquan. Another teapot looks like a big river snail. Without giving careful notice, you wouldn’t know it is a teapot!

Actually, everyone will find something fitting in their own home: a hat-shaped vase for holding flowers, a pumpkin-style jar for storing CDs, and a lotus leaf platter for holding food, to name a few.

You will find crack on some products. They are made by an ancient technique. The body keeps cracking well after a celadon is done, but never breaks into pieces because the glaze holds it into one piece. The cracks only add up to a more gorgeous looking item.

The shop offers free tea to anyone who comes in and wants to sit down to rest your legs. The manager is a young lady. She knows celadon quite well, and is quite generous to share her knowledge with visitors.

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