An Anthropologist’s “Check-in” at Shahe Grand Fair | New Book Excerpt & Saturday Event

Some people never set foot in the market on their own doorstep, yet when they travel elsewhere, the wet market is always their first stop; others watch short videos about “visiting the grand fairs”, drawn in by the bustle, and plunge headlong into the swirl of everyday life. Over the past few years, wet markets have become showcases of a city’s character and have sparked new imaginations online. But for me, a wet market is not just “a sight to behold and a joy to browse” — it is also an entry point for observing society, understanding a city, and practising how to live. During my fieldwork I have experienced different “ways to open” a wet market: the check-in approach — going to a grand fair to witness a real, raucous festival of life; travelling with young companions — using fieldwork methods to turn the bustle into know-how; parent-and-child exploration — treating the market as a hands-on “museum” and planting curiosity between food and people. The paths differ, but all lead to a deeper connection with a place.

It came as a genuine surprise to me that checking in at internet-famous wet markets has become something of a trend. In recent years, wet markets have turned into popular travel destinations — Zhuanxin Market in Kunming, Fengmen Cross Street in Suzhou, Kexiang Market in Nanjing, Bashi Market in Xiamen — among others. A wet market is a window onto a place’s character and customs, and many travellers are drawn by lines like “If you want to understand a place, visit its wet market.” Compared with the countless homogenised ancient towns and food-street promenades, a wet market is genuinely, refreshingly more real.

Online, the wet market has developed a different flavour from the somewhat faded reality on the ground — it has grown ever more lively, with almost a “restoration” about it. Many influencers now produce check-in guides and short videos about wet markets. Some have gone viral across major social platforms, racking up millions of views. A typical video goes something like this: a stylishly dressed influencer, representing the eye of an ordinary urban young person, heads to a wet market to hunt for curiosities, local snacks, and regional flavours, while letting viewers experience local specialities, customs, and the turning of the seasons.

Among the many categories of wet-market content, “visiting the grand fairs” stands out in particular. A grand fair is a traditional rural market; staggered across different regions on set days of the lunar calendar, these market days form an important network for the exchange of goods in the countryside. Today, the grand fairs on the urban fringe have become check-in spots that young people “flock to like ducks” — Boli Grand Fair in Qingdao, Shahe Grand Fair in Changping, Puhe Grand Fair in Shenyang… among the crowds you can spot plenty of young people looking as though they have wandered into a wondrous garden.

The thrill of roaming a grand fair has been vividly described as “hardcore”, “mesmerisingly surreal”, “rustic”, “eye-opening”, “so cheap it’s practically free”, “once you’re in, you can’t get out”, “you want to buy everything you see”… I feel every bit of that.

In late summer, as autumn approached, I visited Shahe Grand Fair, which sprawls across fifty thousand square metres in Changping District, Beijing, and is held every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday entirely in the open air. Even at the entrance, you are met face to face with the fair’s surging energy. By eight or nine in the morning, crowds flow in an unbroken stream: an uncle emerges contentedly clutching a bundle of spring onions, an auntie cradles a potted plant, parents bring along children of four or five, and groups of young people cluster in twos and threes. A tangle of transport weaves in and out — bicycles, electric scooters, stand-up electric balance boards, and the shopping trolley that has become every visitor’s essential companion.

Here, prices drop so low they defy everything I thought I knew about the cost of living, and the hundred yuan in my pocket has never felt so weighty. (And this is still Beijing!) Goods rarely come in fancy packaging — red and blue plastic bags are the prettiest colours you will find — yet the market has its own units of measure: sold by the heap, bought by the bagful. “One hundred and twenty percent” home-grown vegetables from Yanjiao, two yuan a jin and you pick what you like; sandy-fleshed tomatoes from Zhangjiakou, with the stallholder breaking open an entire tray for customers to taste — whether they actually taste of tomato, one bite tells you. Live fish and sea prawns are sold by the basin, all considerably cheaper than at city markets. The “fruit freedom” that is now a middle-class staple is right at your fingertips here: fresh blueberries at twenty yuan a jin, Narcissus mangoes at five, Shine Muscat grapes at ten, Kyoho grapes at six, in-season Pinggu peaches at three, Qilin melons at eight mao a jin — and watermelons are even sold by the bag, ten yuan for three or four.

But alongside bargain goods there are items that demand a careful eye. Gazing at these baffling products where the real and the counterfeit blur together is an education — and a reminder of human complexity. The air-dried beef at the entrance, priced at thirty yuan a jin, is more than likely pressed from duck meat. Durians that typically cost thirty yuan or more are selling here for twenty, though they are very likely to be Ganyao durians with large stones passed off as Golden Pillow. Camel milk from the Tianshan mountains, rare and precious, said to cure the “three highs” — one sip and you can hardly miss the creamer. Second-cut pork at fifteen yuan for two jin, a price rarely seen even at the nadir of the pig cycle — yet the meat is weeping water, and who knows how long it has sat in a freezer. An international-style drinks stall offers bottles in a kaleidoscope of colours, a feast for the eyes; for just ten yuan, customers can get a Ukrainian-imported craft mojito and craft blackcurrant cordial, simply rebottled in Foshan — not even Taobao can find the same thing. And there, too, are “genuine” Putian AJ and Nike trainers in every style, from the latest releases to discontinued models, spread out flat in thin plastic bags for your perusal — plain and sincere.

Those who appreciate life’s finer pleasures can also find lotus flowers and fresh green seed pods, dripping with vitality, at the grand fair. The stall selling singing crickets gives away little bamboo-woven cages, and a cluster of uncles has gathered around. Children visiting the fair need not be disappointed either — there are toy stalls, puppies, kittens, little bunnies, and a profusion of birds, flowers, fish, and insects. The fair also carries tobacco and pipes of every grade. Tobacco is priced by the jin, so you can spend as little or as much as you like. There are premium brands — Zhonghua, Xuanhemen, Huanghelou — and more affordable Hongtashan and Golden Leaf. The shop owner demonstrates rolling a cigarette by hand.

Stallholders from Panjiayuan regularly pop over to Shahe, and the stalls of scholar’s curios span the whole of Chinese history, every dynasty represented, thirty yuan a piece: Tang-dynasty prayer-bead bracelets, Ming-dynasty snuff bottles, mixed copper coins strung from a dozen eras — and of course, no guarantee of authenticity. Next door is a second-hand stall that doubles as a quiet indictment of modern consumerism: every scrap of old junk is repaired and recycled, as though my grandfather’s storage trunk had been turned upside down and spread across the ground for all to browse. There are quite a few stalls selling scholar’s walnuts, each variety boasting a grand and imposing name — Cuji, Eagle’s Beak, Lion-Head. Buy a pair and you can polish them as you stroll, picking up the fair’s atmosphere along the way. Then there are the fresh green walnuts, still in their husks, called Toad’s Head, whose likeness to the golden toad has won them a wave of devoted “appearance fans”. Buying new walnuts is as thrilling as gambling on a raw jade stone.

The grand fair seems to be saying a resolute “no” to industrialisation. The bed sheets and duvet covers come in old-fashioned prints that look gloriously festive. Walk a little further and you find someone carding cotton on the spot, making you a duvet to order — pair it with a floral cover and you can take home a truly one-of-a-kind quilt. The leather-belt stalls display wide sheets of hide in varying shades of tan. All a customer needs to do is stand still while the waist is measured; the owner swiftly cuts and punches holes, insisting on real leather. The buckles can go Western and modern — Chanel, CK — or retro imperial style with gold-inlaid jade and a dragon motif. Walking sticks in various materials are handmade with fine craftsmanship, from peachwood to ash shafts, and can be made to order. A young shop owner pulls out his treasured prize piece — a dignified dragon-head staff in the style of She Taijun — stands ramrod straight, and you half expect him to march off to war the next moment…

I took a cursory circuit of the grand fair, glanced up at my watch, and found two hours had flown by. As I was leaving, I carried a bag of Pinggu peaches and a slice of hawthorn cake, while two little zodiac gourds sat in my trouser pocket — found for me by a child I had met along the way — my belly full of huoshao and luzhu, my brain fizzing with dopamine. In that place I felt it keenly: the eyes cannot take it all in, yet every worry has vanished. No wonder young people love the grand fair.

The fresh, strange thrill a grand fair brings is that its very ordinariness clashes so sharply with young people’s daily lives, conjuring a sense of foreignness within real life itself — even a faint flavour of carnival. You step into an unfamiliar rhythm, a threshold of liminality, drawn by unvarnished authenticity, swept up in the crackling energy, and find a moment’s indulgence and release from the pressures of the everyday.

***

Another way to “open up” a wet market is to shift from watching the spectacle to reading the ins and outs. In recent years, more and more young people have grown curious about the people, stories, and objects in a wet market. They notice the mingling scents of dampness and freshness, the tiny details on hand-painted signs and plastic bags, the overlapping calls of the stallholders. I have led many wet-market visits and watched this curiosity turn into action.

In 2024, as a consultant, I co-founded the “Wet Market Research Group” with Fengnianqing. It began with barely ten members; the group now has over seventy companions. Their motives are as varied as they come: some simply want a chat with the stallholders; some want to photograph every type of plastic bag used for produce in a single market and work out exactly how many kinds there are; some are captivated by the lettering and copywriting of hand-painted signs; some follow the trail of traditional snack stalls on the market’s fringes in search of flavour; some study the art of sourcing ingredients that are both good and affordable; and some zero in on “the sharpest stallholders in the market”, eager to learn their tricks of the trade.

We have organised several site visits, trying to cover every cross-section of city and countryside. Traditional wet markets and “internet-famous” ones in Guangzhou, the rural markets on the urban fringe of Foshan, Hong Kong’s street markets… all featured on our routes. Because one member’s parents run a wholesale stall at Shenzhen’s Haijixing market, we also followed produce upstream into the wholesale market, attempting to understand how food flows through the city.

When leading a visit, I do a guided tour and share my own perspectives. But as an anthropologist who has studied wet markets for years, I deliberately rein in the researcher’s “arrogance” — I resist the urge to hand out answers and would rather let the group look for themselves, ask questions, feel the hollows in a chopping block, catch the damp tang of the fish stalls, weigh the moisture in a head of greens. On the ground at a wet market, the concrete sensations and knowledge you arrive at yourself are often worth more than a hundred lectures. For me, a wet market is a public space open to learning, where young people can reflect on their own lifestyles and consumer choices.

We try to let each participant’s individual experience and initiative shine. Take one member, Yiding: drawing on the database of the newspaper he works for, he traced the historical threads of Guangzhou’s wet markets and led the group into the past as they strolled. Through him we learned the history of part of Shayuan Market — Yuanyang Market: in 1958 small-scale commerce appeared in Haizhu District, state-owned community compounds sprang up alongside it, and Yuanyang Market was set up by Yuanyang Company for the convenience of its residential community. It remains tightly entangled with the story of market-oriented reform, its ownership structure still complex, and subsequent upgrades and redevelopment have been difficult for precisely that reason… Everyone listened intently, understanding the market’s present form through its history.

To spark exploration, each session has an enthusiastic member step up as a lead, prepare in advance, and set small tasks. After browsing, we sit down for a group discussion. One time, the lead had everyone draw a “sensory map”: find a point inside the market and record “what I smell / hear / touch / taste / see”; if this feeling had a shape, what would it be? What colour is it closer to? What word does it call to mind? Each point gets a photograph, to be labelled on the map afterwards. An exercise like this translates the “unnameable qi” of a place into details you can share.

“Finding each market’s unique ‘qi’ can only be done from inside it,” one member said. Observations at Xinhongfeng Market were particularly striking: shaped by the Hubei migrants drawn by the garment-making industry, the market is suffused with a “Tianmen flavour”. The foam-board labels on the produce crates don’t read “local”, “Conghua”, or “Qingyuan” — they read “Tianmen”: Tianmen aubergines, potatoes, loofahs, garlic shoots; even the salt is produced by Changzhou Company in Tianmen, Hubei.

After several visits, someone said: “After browsing wet markets enough, you can feel your bodily understanding of food, culture, and the city slowly shifting.” “I feel I understand Guangzhou more and more.” Others moved from “I dislike it” to “I can’t do without it”. One member, Yiyezhou, recalled dreading a market’s dimness, dampness, and clamour as a child: “When adults dragged me shopping, eight times out of ten I’d duck away.” After moving abroad and learning to cook, she found that supermarkets simply didn’t carry many seasonal ingredients, so she turned to the wet market. Rounding a corner, she spotted Chinese toon and fresh seasonal coriander, bought them with glee, and posted them on her social media — only to be told she had mistaken Chinese celery for coriander. After the mix-up, she realised that if she wanted to eat well, she could never confine herself to the supermarket; she had to deepen her knowledge of food.

Stepping into Shenzhen’s Haijixing wholesale market, one figure struck me with particular force: around 85% of the vegetables consumed in Shenzhen come through here. That “so it’s really this simple” shock makes you grasp that, in a city where spending levels are so high, the difference in produce sources between one supermarket or restaurant and the next is not as vast as you might imagine. Browsing Haijixing, you feel that an enormous supply chain sustains countless people, yet food here moves more like cargo in transit. And so some members began to understand why they default to online shopping and lean towards e-commerce or Hema, and began asking why the “soulful” wet market is disappearing — why do we treat it merely as a commodity? Can we not have more choices?

At the rural markets of Sanzhou Xu in Foshan, Nanxiong in northern Guangdong, and Maoming in western Guangdong, Feilan wrote: “I saw live chickens, ducks, and geese, hand-woven bamboo baskets, and unfamiliar yet abundant local produce; I encountered more handmade food and food producers who deal directly with consumers — vegetable growers, poultry farmers, beekeepers… I also saw how much closer we are to the land than we think, the wild, rough grain of the countryside, the many faces of smallholder life across the regions, and the flexibility, resilience, and wisdom of everyone who works with food.”

These outings are hardly “properly organised” — they run largely on enthusiasm — yet energy never wanes. By 2025, members outside Guangzhou were suggesting we hold sessions in their own hometowns, so we launched the “Wet Market Archive” project: online, we discuss “how to browse a wet market”, share techniques for interviews and observation, and then each person goes and practises.

The template for the Wet Market Archive is very simple:

At the outset I worried that, under such rough guidance, everyone’s Wet Market Archive would look alike, but I soon realised I had been fussing. Each person had their own focus: some were especially attentive to visual presentation and noticed that some markets write their slogans in extraordinary detail, even adding cooking instructions; others observed that the “services” a market provides each carry their own significance in the community — beyond selling produce, it is an information hub where job vacancies are posted, neighbourhood gossip circulates, and all manner of everyday services are taken on.

Looking back, my favourite moment always comes after the group has dispersed. We set our bags down gently, sit in a circle, and tell each other about the different worlds we have seen inside the same market: who notices the size and material of a plastic bag, who is obsessed with the handwriting on a hand-painted sign, who falls suddenly silent at the sight of a hometown snack, who understands for the first time “why I never liked visiting wet markets”. I think this is why I keep leading people through them. The market is still as noisy as ever, yet time after time it helps people think more clearly about food, about the city, and about themselves.

   – About the Author –   

Zhong Shuru | Associate Professor at the School of Tourism, Sun Yat-sen University; PhD in Anthropology from Texas A&M University. She has long researched wet-market culture, sustainable food systems, and gastronomic tourism, and in both her scholarship and practice continues to explore how food can serve as a medium for reconnecting people with food, nature, society, and place.

From working behind a fish stall on a remote island to exploring how wet markets connect with sustainable living, Professor Zhong has appeared on Foodthink to share many insights about the wet market — click here to see them.

   – Event Preview –   

   – New Book Information –   

Author: Zhong Shuru

Guangqi Books | Published July 2026

10 years, 50-plus cities, 200-plus wet markets…

Based on panoramic observation and fieldwork conducted at urban wet markets across the country,

the book explores the history of wet markets, the communities of street vendors, the supply chains behind them, food consumption culture, urban public management, and much more.

   – Table of Contents –   

All images in this article are illustrations from the book

Layout: Xiaoshu

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