Pearl Market (Hongqiao Market) - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)
Pearl Market (Hongqiao Market)

Pearl Market (Hongqiao Market)

Pearl Market (Hongqiao Market)
4
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Monday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Tuesday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Wednesday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Thursday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Friday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Saturday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
Sunday
9:30 AM - 7:00 PM
About
This is Beijing's largest and most popular market for pearl jewelry (notably freshwater pearls), clothing and luggage.
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  • Sandini W
    Colombo, Sri Lanka87 contributions
    4.0 of 5 bubbles
    A must visit place for pearls and silk
    It was a good experience. There are pearls of all sort- the obvious fake to may be genuine. And silk , handbags, electronics. The top floor shops do not accommodate much bargaining but they will also definitely lower the price - a lot . The top floor shops are decent and helpful. Ground, first and second floors are all for bargaining. Mindy Jewelry is a nice place with both fresh and saltwater real pearls. They speak English well too. There are some nice shops in ground floor too (eg: no. 94 & 86) where you can get good price for silk through bargaining. The silk might not be 100% but there are beautiful designs.
    Visited September 2023
    Traveled solo
    Written September 17, 2023
  • KodoDrummer
    Buenos Aires, Argentina70,553 contributions
    4.0 of 5 bubbles
    Fun bargain hunting
    There are all sorts of goods for sale at this market. Expect to bargain, as the initial price is typically 20% to 50% higher than the final selling price. If you can’t tell fake knockoff jewelry from the real thing, it is best not to make your purchase at the Pearl Market, unless you are paying the price for knockoffs.
    Visited April 2024
    Traveled with friends
    Written April 14, 2024
  • Amila Perera
    Gampaha, Sri Lanka466 contributions
    4.0 of 5 bubbles
    Bargain hard for FAKE goods!
    The place got good street food options in the basement. Bargaining is the key to success here. The shopkeepers are good in English but offer lower prices for locals. The products are all fake and the prices tend to vary from shop to shop.
    Visited March 2024
    Traveled with family
    Written April 14, 2024
These reviews are the subjective opinion of Tripadvisor members and not of TripAdvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.

Most Recent: Reviews ordered by most recent publish date in descending order.

Detailed Reviews: Reviews ordered by recency and descriptiveness of user-identified themes such as wait time, length of visit, general tips, and location information.

Popular mentions

4.0
4.0 of 5 bubbles1,145 reviews
Excellent
337
Very good
422
Average
253
Poor
72
Terrible
61

diko65
Carnarvon, Australia
4.0 of 5 bubbles
Jan 2020 • Family
Pearl market’s are pretty full on . When walking through the stalls you dare not stop or even look sideways , otherwise you are almost accosted by the shop owners.
Stay strong when bartering and be prepared to walk off, that usually brings a appropriate price. It’s fun for us but a living for them. Also floor 4 and 5 are far more civilised than the lower ones.
Written January 19, 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

Marg5165
Calgary, Canada
5.0 of 5 bubbles
Dec 2019
Fabulous place to shop, great deals! Shops are very clean and English is spoken fluently. Canadian cash is accepted. Very few vendors accept credit cards due to bargain prices. Clothing, shoes, purses, costume jewelry and jade. Fine jewelry stores accept credit cards.
Written March 5, 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

Sandini W
Colombo, Sri Lanka
4.0 of 5 bubbles
Sep 2023 • Solo
It was a good experience. There are pearls of all sort- the obvious fake to may be genuine. And silk , handbags, electronics. The top floor shops do not accommodate much bargaining but they will also definitely lower the price - a lot . The top floor shops are decent and helpful. Ground, first and second floors are all for bargaining. Mindy Jewelry is a nice place with both fresh and saltwater real pearls. They speak English well too.
There are some nice shops in ground floor too (eg: no. 94 & 86) where you can get good price for silk through bargaining. The silk might not be 100% but there are beautiful designs.
Written September 17, 2023
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

KodoDrummer
Buenos Aires, Argentina
4.0 of 5 bubbles
Apr 2024 • Friends
There are all sorts of goods for sale at this market. Expect to bargain, as the initial price is typically 20% to 50% higher than the final selling price. If you can’t tell fake knockoff jewelry from the real thing, it is best not to make your purchase at the Pearl Market, unless you are paying the price for knockoffs.
Written April 15, 2024
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

Amila Perera
Gampaha, Sri Lanka
4.0 of 5 bubbles
Mar 2024 • Family
The place got good street food options in the basement. Bargaining is the key to success here. The shopkeepers are good in English but offer lower prices for locals.
The products are all fake and the prices tend to vary from shop to shop.
Written April 15, 2024
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

richiel747
Richmond, Canada
5.0 of 5 bubbles
Jan 2022
The Pearl Market is what tourists are looking for. Cheap stuff and you have to want to and be good at bargaining with the shop keeps. It is the classic back and forth and these days they can be a bit aggressive. The mall is really really quiet but you will find everything from jewelry, hand bags, pack packs, electronics, t-shirts and traditional clothing. It's fun but also very tiring.
Written January 1, 2022
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

venkateshkini
Mumbai, India
2.0 of 5 bubbles
Aug 2019 • Business
Fake products, cheap goods, massive bargaining on knock-offs. Boughts toys, bags and jackets but all turned out to be fake and of poor quality. They start at 1000 Yuan and then sell below 100 Yuan, so only real fun is in the bargaining. But the products aren't worth the 100 Yuan really. Waste of money and time.
Written August 24, 2019
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

KodoDrummer
Buenos Aires, Argentina
4.0 of 5 bubbles
May 2019 • Friends
This is a large multi-floor market offering wide range of goods (pearls, jade, other jewelry, figurines, silk and cashmere goods, other clothing, handbags, purses, leather belts, shoes, toys, electronic goods, tea, and more), including a food court in the basement. The very dedicated sellers target you even when you are ten metres away and approaching. They have a bargain for you. In some cases, yes, but beware of quality and fake goods. The floors and goods are well organized by product types.
Written May 29, 2019
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

aussiewanderers
Sydney, Australia
4.0 of 5 bubbles
You will only enjoy this and other similar markets in Beijijg and Shanghai and other tourist towns in China (like in Guilin and Yangshuo) if you either have the natural personality to innately enjoy the challenge of getting something at the best price by haggling in a jovial way, or if you don't have that sort of personality, by learning to do it anyway before you get out your wallet or purse. If you don't learn and you are timid or easily embarrassed about money matters, this type of market is not for you and you are better off shopping in a big department store where you will be able to shop in peace but pay a very high price for what you find - there are few bargains to be found in department stores in China. But if you are skilled in bargaining and regard the slightly aggressive moves of market stall holders of grabbbing your arm to prevent you leaving (so that they can continue to bargain with you) as all part of a game, then you will enjoy some fantastic shopping for generally quality clothes at no more than a quarter the price of what you expect to pay in the West.

I would only recommend purchasing non-electronic items at markets like these. Electronic products are very complicated and you can't easily detect the quality of such a product. Certainly don't buy any mobile phones or computer products. Maybe a copy watch if you examine it carefully and form judgements based on its weight and general appearance. Examples we have heard about are a phone which turned on and displayed all the right stuff but couldn't actually use a SIM card, a memmory stick claiming to be 500Gb and instead was far far less capacity.

There are four key secrets to bargainig well in China:
1. Always remember that you ultimately have the upper hand in bargaining. These markets are typically a building of 4 to 6 floors, each floor filled with 20 to 50 individual stall holders, most selling the same things and all competing against one another for your custom. So if you can't get the price you want at one stall, there is always the next one.
2. Never get emotionally attached to an item until after you have struck a price. It is harder to walk away to force a lower price if you have emotionally committed and don't want to risk not being able to purchase an item
3. Always be on guard. Never is the term "Caveat Emptor" or "Buyer Beware" truer than it is in China, where there are no consumer protection laws. Don't trust anything the sales person tells you - always look for evidence of what is asserted about a product (eg, if the sales person tells you something is stainless steel, have a little magnet with you to test it - stainless steel is not attracted).
4. If you can (it will get easier as you buy more items), have in your head what you will be happy to pay for an item. This enables you to more easily recognise when you can give in to the vendor and accept his modified asking price. In general, think in terms of about a quarter of what you would pay in the West. Do NOT think of it in terms of a fraction of the vendor's initial asking price - that is fatal, as I will expalin below.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to go about bargaining:
PRELIMINARIES:
1) Walk by the stalls slowly, peering into them to see their stock and ignoring, except perhaps for a smile, their pleas to stop and look. If you aren't interested in anything they have, do not stop, just keep on moving to the next stall.
2) If you do spot something you are interested in, do not show any enthusiasm for it. Rather, casually enquire about it and appear to be half-heatrted about it.
3) Commence the bargaining process only after you are SURE you want it (at the right price) and only after you have identified the exact variant of the product (eg, one material vs another). Once you switch preferences, the price will always be higher because it is a more xpensive material, more popular, from a different factory etc etc. Identify ALL the items in that stall that you want to buy. You will have a stronger hand if you bargain for all items at once (but only as per MULTIPLE ITEMS below)
4) Don't try anything on for size before you start the bargaining process. Ask instead if they have your size (it will be a big size for most Westerners). They will immediately want to try the garment on you so that you become emotionally committed, but resist this, insisting that they reply to your question of "how much" instead. Don't worry about spending time doing the bargaining before you know for sure if they have your size, because what happens 90% of the time if that stall does not have your size, they go to another stall and get it from there in order to close the sale.
5) They will punch in an asking price for the garment or item on their calculator and show it to you. Now you are ready to commence the main bargaining process.

MAIN BARGAINING PROCESS
What happens with the suckers in this type of market is that the vendor nominates his initial asking price and the Westerner rejects that. The Chinese vendor then asks what the Westerner is happy to pay. The Westerner thinks if he can get 50% of the asking price he has done well. The vendor says 50% is too low and offers 80% of the initial price and the haggling continues to settle on a price somewhere around 75% of the initial asking price.
The best way to clearly explain how to bargain well is to draw an analogy between price and altitude. Regarding the fair price for the product as ground level, the vendor will start not with a sky-high price, but a price which is in outer space - say beyond the moon, knowing that the Westerner will want to chop that price in half. It is a big mistake for the buyer to nominate a price he is "happy to pay" too early in the process. The strategy which really worked for us is as follows:
1) Insist that the vendor keeps lowering the price. With each lower price punched into the calculator, insist that you are looking for a lower price and refuse to take hold of the calculator. This forces the vendor to move his outer space price to a price somewhere in the clouds. Just keep on saying "too expensive" and/or gesticulating with your hand to indicate "lower", and even moving to leave the shop. It is always the case that the vendor will keep lowering the price as they do want the sale, and will soon forget the dream of selling at an outer space price and will be content to aim for a price somewhere in Earth's atmosphere instead.
2) Generally, a price in the clouds will be at about 50% of the initial asking price. When you get to this point, you can then start to offer a price. The vendor will be hoping that you nominate a price at ground level so that he can force you to meet him in the middle somewhere in the sky. The trick is to, in a friendly and humorous way, offer a price which is sub-terranrian, justifying it by saying something like "I am not that keen on it" or pointing out a fault with the product, or saying it is the wrong colour etc.
3) The vendor will protest and plead for a higher price, saying he makes no profit at that price. You raise your price by a tiny amount, remainng at a level deep underground.
4) The vendor will then drop his previous price (still in the sky but by now beneath the clouds) saying he has a family to support etc etc. He is now beginning to realise that you know what you are doing.
5) You then offer the price you regard as subway level. The vendor will protest strongly and offer a price still in the sky. At this point you quite often have to begin to walk out of the shop, saying that you think it is too expensive and you will look around at other stalls.
In most cases, to get a good price, you have to walk.
6) In the majority of cases, the vendor will shout out very shortly after you have left the shop that he will either accept your last offered price (subway level, better than ground level) or make a counter offer, which in his desperation for the sale, will be at ground level or very close to it. You have your item at the price you want.
7) If the vendor doesn't meet your subway or ground-level price, you proceed to the next stall knowing that you aimed too low and that you will have to aim for a slightly higher price. If you can't find the item in another stall, you can go back to the stall where you unsucccessfully bargained, but don't go in looking for the item. Let them remind you of it (they will remember you) and reluctantly offer a slightly higher price than the price you walked out at.

In our experience, if 100 was the ground-level price, the process worked through the following levels:
Outer space = 600, Stratosphere = 400, Clouds = 300, Ground level = 100, Subway = 80, Subterrainian = 50

BARGAINING FOR MULTIPLE ITEMS
Always identify everything in a stall you want to buy before you commence bargaining. Otherwise, you will not only waste time starting from scratch with the outer space price for each item, but you risk paying too much for the second item because the vendor is determined to make up what he "lost" on the first item.
When shoppping for multiple units of the same item, the technique which worked for us was to get close to the ground level price for the first item and then to force the price down further by offering to pay slightly less per item for however many items we wanted. So for example, if we got the price down to 100 yuan after starting at 400 yuan, we would offer two of the item for 160 yuan, vendor would come back with a satisfactory 180 yuan.

If you want multiple different items, you have to go through the process to get close to ground level price on the first item and then suddenly get distracted by the second item you want to buy and get its price close to ground level. You can then offer to purchase both products at their respective subway-level prices, and the vendor for the sake of multiple sales will come to ground level on both.

PRICES WE PAID FOR SOME ITEMS
While we can't prove the prices we paid in September 2010 are the best one could possibly achieve, we are confident they are at least close to the best price and at worst are a long way from being ripped off:
Man's full length winter coat with removable lining (copy of a prestige brand) ...Y300
Quality copy watch, battery operated............................................................................Y50
Woman's cotton shirt (copy of prestige brand)...........................................................Y70
Man's dress T-shirt, fine cotton (copy prestige brand)..............................................Y70
Silk tie (low grade silk/higth grade silk)...................................................................Y30/118
Pure silk king size quilt cover with 4 matching silk pillow cases..........................Y1250
Lady's Cashmere winter three quater coat, tailor-made..........................................Y600
Lady's polyester & cotton blend/pure wool long pants, tailor-made................Y120/160
Gent's imitation leather belt (copy prestige brand)..................................................Y50
Large soft luggage bag with wheels, low quality (copy of prestige brand)........Y200
"Great Wall" or "beijing" Baseball style hat .................................................................Y10
Man's quality shorts with many pockets.......................................................................Y90
Polaroid sunglasses (copy of prestige brand)..........................................................Y120
Leather wallet (copy of presige brand).........................................................................Y60
Lady's cashmere scarf.....................................................................................................Y50
Man's leather casual walking shoes.............................................................................Y300
Man's sneakers (copy of famous brand)......................................................................Y120
Written October 19, 2010
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

InnaYYZ
Toronto, Canada
4.0 of 5 bubbles
May 2019 • Friends
The vast majority of the vendors are very pushy. All kinds of goods are sold. Most are of a reasonable quality, including the fakes. I bought some scarfs, Chinese panda figurines, and a fake but seemingly high quality handbag. Original asking price is usually reduced when you suggest it is not exactly what you are seeking.
Written May 25, 2019
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.

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Pearl Market (Hongqiao Market) - All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go (2024)

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