Dalian Antique City Gone

For anyone who visits Dalian and enjoys hunting around for odds and ends you might want to know that the Dalian Antique City on Gangwan Jie has been bulldozed for redevelopment. To be fair it was never much good – mostly tatand ridiculous prices. However, the last time I was there with a friend we did see some very nice mugs, plates etc with old shipping line logos and train line operator logos on them. Not much else though – indeed the vendors had little idea of realistic pricing. I looked at several old postcards of Dalian – nothing special, poor condition and would have been 99p if that on eBay – but the shop owner wanted over RMB100, basically a tenner, and wouldn’t budge. As this was at least nine times the price of Portobello Road 5,000miles away my money stayed firmly in my pocket. Odd that they used to try and gauge visitors so relentlessly as the place was always deserted when I went there of either Chinese or tourists. I’ll be charitable and assume they just didn’t know that this sort of thing was far cheaper in Europe or on the internet. So no great loss I suppose – the building itself had no architectural merit- but always a more interesting half hour stroll than a shopping mall.