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Did you ever wish you could go back to being ten years old again? Do you remember not having to worry about work, rent, money, relationships, sex, global warming, pollution, war, crime, poverty, the permanent soul-crushing sense of oppression and futility that is waking up every day in this modern life -- all that stuff? Wouldn’t it be so very sweet to go back to those simple times?
Well, you can, at the toy market.
Well, you can't, you'll just be that creepy old guy with all those problems still but at least you'll be at the toy market. Checkin' out some toys.
There’s a few toy markets around the city but the one in particular I’m talking about is right next to the Temple of Heaven’s East Gate. Right across the street from the temple grounds is the Hongqiao (Pearl) Market, which holds nothing of use to man nor beast unless you enjoy buying fake jewelry for highly inflated prices or having dozens of people ask you if you want to buy a wallet. Yet directly behind the Pearl Market, you’ll find a wonderland for children and irresponsible adults with a disposable income. It's the Hongqiao Tianle Toy Market.
It looks like this on the outside:
And on the inside it looks like this. It's your standard stalls-crammed-in-a-big-linoleum-room market place:
Let’s take a look around.
Toys! Loads and loads of toys! Race cars, remote controlled helicopters, chemistry sets, all kinds of awesome under one roof. There’s going to be a bunch of stuff you’ve probably never heard of nor seen before, and a whole lot of it is of questionable authenticity/quality, but seriously, look long and deep into your bag of give-a-fucks on this one. Remember when you were kid and you didn’t have your own money so you had to rely on grown ups to supply you with toys and games? Well, now you’re the grown up and you can buy whatever you want! What’s more most of this stuff is pretty cheap. Non of it has prices on so you can get your haggle on and grip some amazing stuff you totally don’t need.
Such as inefficient modes of transport. Ever wondered where all those kids got their funny not-really-skateboard skateboard things? Now you know.
They also have “skateboards”. I put quotation marks around that because these things are to skateboards what Taco Bell is to Mexican food. Still, they’re there for the breaking. Let’s move on.
I imagine shopping for children and little people must be a pain in the ass, but the toy market’s got your back! Now the small people you are affiliated with can look totally badass all the time. Check those super hero get ups on the top row: I wish I could squeeze into one of them so I could be totally ripped without having to go to the gym or do anything at all.
OK, so the costumes might not be of much use to you but these sunglasses are going to change your life on so many levels. 10rmb a pop. If you like to do unproductive things in a dark rooms at 3am on a Sunday morning a pair of these badboys is only going to take the proceedings up to Warp Factor 10.
In case the actual cockroaches crawling all over your house just aren’t cutting it you can purchase some artificial ones to give the place that real “grit” that friends and life partners appreciate so dearly. You could also put them in people’s hair when they’re asleep or passed out. That could be pretty funny.
Check out this little homie scoping out those swords. You know what he’s thinking and I know you’re thinking the exact same thing:
"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women."
There’s actually a few levels to the toy market but most of the cool stuff is on the ground floor. The second and third floors were physical manifestations of the word “boring” in comparison, boasting only art supplies and stationary. The fourth floor claimed to be a more upscale games floor, but had more of depressing place-where-dreams-go-to-die vibe with the exception of one costume shop. They have adult sizes! Halloween is coming and this place is going to be your jam.
Do you need a fake severed forearm? If you are in a horror punk band I think the answer is yes. If you’re not in a horror punk band I think the answer is still yes. 25rmb well spent.
On our way out we found these: fake 8-bit video games. Knock offs of old NES games to be exact. I’ll save you the spiel, basically they are between 10-20rmb for a game, and they usually have a few games crammed in there. The games shown on the cartridge often have nothing to do with the games within. Sometimes the games are bizarre mash ups of different titles (eg. ‘Jackie Chan’s Kung Fu’ + ‘Super Mario’ = ‘Kung Fu Mario’).
Do you remember how awesome games were when you were a kid? That’s because they were awesome, so forget all of that Xbox trash and start a collection of crap 8-bit games today.
Of course you’ll need a system to play them on. This is it. There was a more upmarket model for 100rmb, whereas this one was around 50rmb. Who cares, look how happy the chick on the box looks. That’s how happy you will be once you jack this baby into your television.
Out on the main street back towards we subway we passed this shop.
Sure enough they had more 8-bit knock offs. Why buy one game when you can buy 245? For the sum of 45rmb that works at 0.18rmb per game. God, I love China.
They had some 16-bit knocks off too, but I don’t swing that way. However they did have some Gameboy cartridges in a dish by the door. I was thinking of learning to play tennis but after buying this for 5rmb I really don’t need to. Win.
And that’s pretty much it. A wonderland of crap you don’t need but can totally afford and therefore should buy. I’ll leave you with this image of this badass gun. You know you want to hold it. It’s OK, we all want to. So just take it, no one will judge you here.
The Hongqiao Toy Market is a few minutes walk north from Tiantan East Gate subway station (Exit B) , located behind the main Hongqiao market. It’s open daily, 10am-6pm.
