[Note: Read a more chronological account of Day 17 on calpolymbatrip.com]

Day seventeen would be our final full day in China. Moreover, it would be the last time I would have to hang out with many of my classmates for some time, as most of us were spreading across California, the rest of the US, and internationally, upon our return home. I had become more melancholy as the trip started to come to a close, but the final day truly brought out the sentimentalist in me. I noticed that I took almost exclusively “people” photographs that day (street scenes as well as shots of my classmates), and spent quite a bit of time just thinking about things.

The highlight of the day for me was definitely our visit to an antique market, though I doubt most of the goods being sold would qualify as “antique.” I spent most of my time taking in the sights and sounds, photographing what I saw, attempting to find a gift for my wife, and generally reflecting on my time in China. I took a lot of photographs of the vendors sitting in their section of the market, waiting to engage customers. Despite the packed confines and massive number of stores and patrons, very few vendors were pushy. In fact, from a pleasantness standpoint, it was one of the best shopping experiences of the trip.

I didn’t buy much but spent a great deal of time at one individual’s booth. I was fascinated by a stack of vintage propoganda posters he had. As I leafed through each one, he would stop me and describe (in a mix of Mandarin and English) what was going on in each image. He also kept pointing to the dates on the prints, which were all 1966 (the beginning of the Cultural Revolution).

To say that he was both proud and attached to the prints would be an understatement. I ended up purchasing twelve, a first edition english version of Mao’s writings (also printed in 1966) and mini-versions of The Blue Lotus, the edition of the Adventures of Tintin where he visits China. After a quick search, I found out that the versions I purchased, which are small pocket-sized books with black and white pages on the inside, are pirated versions of the book (check out this BBC article), and that legal versions of the comic books were not allowed to be distributed in China until 2001. I bought them for purely nostalgic reasons, having read the comic book series as a child, but am glad to have the pirated twist as well — it makes them that much more eccentric.

TAGS: China | MBA | Cal Poly | Beijing | Antique Market | Silk Alley | Pearl Market

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