Chapter 32: Broken Porcelain
Early the next morning, while Su Xiaofan was still lying in bed, there was a knock on the door.
“Hey, Little Su, you’re not up yet.”
Seeing Su Xiaofan come to open the door with bleary eyes, Zhao Zhengshan laughed, “You young people really do sleep well. At my age, I can’t even sleep in if I want to.”
“Uncle Zhao, sorry. Give me a moment. I’ll wash up and then we can go.”
Su Xiaofan scratched his head sheepishly. He had made plans with Zhao Zhengshan yesterday to go browse the antique market in Yanjing today.
“No problem, no rush. I’ll take you to have some authentic Yanjing breakfast later.” Zhao Zhengshan waved his hand and sat down on the sofa in the room.
Su Xiaofan was very quick, and five or six minutes later the two of them left.
“I really can’t get used to this taste.”
Drinking what Zhao Zhengshan called the most authentic Yanjing fermented mung bean drink, Su Xiaofan pulled a long face. He genuinely couldn’t enjoy the flavor.
“Whether you can get used to it or not, you still have to come and try it.” Zhao Zhengshan said, “It took me several years of staying in Yanjing before I got used to this breakfast too.”
“Uncle Zhao, where are we going today? Pan Garden?”
Su Xiaofan asked. He knew that Zhao Zhengshan had studied traditional Chinese medicine in Yanjing, and including his internship, had stayed in Yanjing for nearly eight or nine years. Later, unable to adapt to the fast pace of life in a big city, he returned to Luochuan.
“Pan Garden is practically a tourist attraction now. These days it’s mostly people selling antiques and collectibles.”
Zhao Zhengshan shook his head. “If we’re going to shops, then it’s Liulichang. Jingxin Hall has a branch there too. But today we’re going to the antique street at the Northern Secondhand Goods Market. There are a few more good things there, and maybe we’ll even find a bargain.”
“Okay, I’ll listen to you, Uncle Zhao.”
Su Xiaofan had no objections. He also knew that although Pan Garden had a huge reputation and was almost becoming a holy ground for antique markets nationwide, the more famous a place like that was, the lower the chances of finding anything truly good.
As for the Liulichang Zhao Zhengshan mentioned, Su Xiaofan knew that Yanjing’s time-honored shops were all there. But Liulichang had no street stalls; if you wanted to buy something, you had to go into a shop, so people who liked treasure hunting and finding bargains rarely went there.
The longer Su Xiaofan spent with Zhao Zhengshan, the more he admired the Zhao family’s upbringing.
Although the family was worth tens of billions, Zhao Zhengshan really behaved like an ordinary person. After breakfast, he didn’t even call a car, but instead took the subway with Su Xiaofan. They even transferred once along the way, spending more than an hour before arriving at the antique market.
“I know this place well.”
When they arrived at the antique market, looking at the bustling crowds and the street stalls arranged in two rows along the street, Su Xiaofan couldn’t help laughing.
Although the stalls here really were street stalls, with the goods simply spread out directly on the ground, antique markets were all much the same. Looking at those stall owners, Su Xiaofan found them quite similar to the ones in Luochuan.
“Little Su, want to compete and see who can find a bargain?”
Zhao Zhengshan was also excited to be here. His graduate school back then wasn’t far from here, and he used to come browse almost every week. Now it was practically a return to an old haunt.
“Uncle Zhao, I can’t afford the good stuff.”
Su Xiaofan shook his head repeatedly. Even a single hair plucked from Zhao Zhengshan would be thicker than him; how could he possibly compete with him?
“Hey, we’re competing on eyesight, not on who has more money. If I wanted to buy expensive things, I’d just go to Liulichang……”
Zhao Zhengshan waved his hand and said；“Let’s each buy one thing for no more than three thousand yuan and see who can find the bargain, how about it?”
Zhao Zhengshan liked collecting, and what he really enjoyed was the feeling of finding a bargain.
Back when he was in school, there were still quite a few good things in Yanjing’s antique markets, and he could occasionally pick up one or two pieces. But nowadays, the chances of finding such bargains had become increasingly slim.
“Sure, Uncle Zhao, you have to go easy on me.”
Su Xiaofan nodded in agreement. With the restoration system in his mind, if they were purely competing on eyesight, even if an expert from a museum came, Su Xiaofan wouldn’t be afraid of him.
“Good. One person looks on one side, and when we reach the end, we switch sides, how about that?”
Most antique streets were more or less the same. Like Luochuan, both sides of a street were lined with stalls, with a path left in the middle for tourists. When they came across shops along the roadside, the stalls also had to leave room for people to pass.
“Okay!”
Since being hospitalized after getting struck by lightning, this was the first time Su Xiaofan had properly browsed a market. And since he was in an unfamiliar place, he was also somewhat looking forward to it.
After greeting Su Xiaofan, Zhao Zhengshan began browsing. He looked very carefully, stopping at the very first stall, squatting down, and immediately haggling with the stall owner.
Su Xiaofan smiled and walked over to look at the stall on the other side.
Street stalls in antique markets usually weren’t categorized.
In other words, you could see porcelain, bronze ware, calligraphy and paintings all displayed on the same stall, and most of these stalls got their goods from art wholesale markets.
Squatting down, Su Xiaofan looked at the items one by one. He didn’t immediately choose to use the restoration system to identify them, because many things were obviously fake at a glance.
Only when he encountered an object that he couldn’t quite make sense of would he focus his attention or pick it up to examine it, causing information about the object to appear in his mind.
Seeing that Su Xiaofan was young, those stall owners couldn’t be bothered to call out to him.
“Finding bargains really isn’t easy these days.”
After looking through seven or eight stalls in a row, Su Xiaofan hadn’t seen a single “old” object. They were all modern handicrafts. At most, a few handmade crafts were decent, but they had nothing to do with antiques.
“Boss, did you dig up some kiln site or something?”
Su Xiaofan squatted down in front of a stall selling broken porcelain pieces. There were quite a lot of porcelain fragments on the stall, piled up layer upon layer to a height of seven or eight centimeters.
“Hey, buddy, you got that right. These are all Jun kiln porcelain fragments. Oh, and there are Ding kiln ones too. I’ve got pieces from all five famous kilns.”
The stall owner wasn’t very old either. He had been reading a novel on his phone, but when he saw someone come to his stall, he immediately put down his phone.
“Big brother, you guys have played the ‘Ru, Guan, Ge, Ding, Jun’ five famous kilns to death, haven’t you.”、
Su Xiaofan laughed when he heard this. In the antique market, anyone selling porcelain, whether finished pieces or broken fragments, was sure to slap the label of one of the five famous kilns on them.
“Hey, buddy, you can’t put it that way. The broken porcelain I have really does include pieces from the five famous kilns.”
The stall owner was unhappy when he heard Su Xiaofan’s words. “I’m telling you, even experts from the New Palace Museum often come here to hunt for porcelain fragments. Don’t believe me? Look at this photo of me with Teacher Zhou. By the way, do you know Teacher Zhou?”
Afraid that Su Xiaofan wouldn’t believe him, the stall owner held his phone up in front of Su Xiaofan. It really did contain a photo of the stall owner with a man wearing a traditional Chinese tunic.
“Mm, I know. He’s an expert from the New Palace Museum.”
Su Xiaofan nodded. As the saying went, “Gold in chaotic times, antiques in prosperous times.” The past twenty years could be said to have been twenty years of vigorous development for the antique market. All kinds of online and offline appraisal programs had appeared frequently, and quite a few so-called “experts” had emerged.
Of course, although most of them were experts in name only, there were also plenty with genuine knowledge and ability. The Teacher Zhou this stall owner mentioned was an expert from the New Palace Museum, with profound expertise in the appraisal of miscellaneous antiques and porcelain.
“Buddy, I’m telling you, all these porcelain fragments of mine were collected by my grandfather back in the day from places where those kiln sites were excavated.”
Seeing Su Xiaofan start examining the porcelain fragments on the stall, the stall owner became animated. “They’ve been sitting here all these years because I couldn’t bear to sell them. It’s only because I’m a spendthrift that I brought out the things passed down from our ancestors, and you just happened to catch me at the right time.”
“Big brother, if you keep telling stories, I’m leaving.”
Su Xiaofan waved his hand helplessly. He hadn’t come to this porcelain-fragment stall to find a bargain.
Although there was a saying that a single piece of broken porcelain could be worth a thousand pieces of gold, apart from the legendary ‘Chai kiln’, the vast majority of broken porcelain wasn’t worth much. Broken porcelain couldn’t make it into auctions, and collectors of it were a relatively niche group, so it was destined not to sell for a high price.
Su Xiaofan had come here to see whether the restoration points in his mind could repair these completely broken porcelain fragments.
【Restoration Points: 7!】
【Jun kiln broken porcelain, cannot be restored!】
Picking up a broken porcelain fragment, the words “cannot be restored” appeared in Su Xiaofan’s mind.
What surprised Su Xiaofan, however, was that the piece in his hand really was a Jun kiln porcelain fragment. The stall owner hadn’t been making it up; he really did have some genuine goods.
“Could it be that objects missing their main body can’t be restored?”
Su Xiaofan pondered in his mind. “Then if I can gather all the fragments of a Jun kiln porcelain vessel, would it be possible to restore a genuine Jun porcelain piece?”
Looking at this pile of several thousand broken porcelain fragments, Su Xiaofan felt a little excited. With so many fragments, perhaps he could piece together a complete porcelain vessel.
“Buddy, are you buying or not?”
Seeing Su Xiaofan blocking the front of his stall, the stall owner was somewhat displeased. The antique market had such a large flow of people, and Su Xiaofan standing here was getting in the way of his business.
“I’m buying. Big brother, how much for this piece of broken porcelain?” Su Xiaofan picked up the Jun kiln porcelain fragment in his hand.
“That’s from an official kiln. Give me two hundred.” Seeing that a sale was coming, the stall owner perked up a little and casually quoted a price.
“One hundred yuan!” Su Xiaofan replied without even looking up.
“Buddy, if you really want it, the lowest I can go is one hundred and eighty.” The stall owner looked thoroughly unhappy.
“Fifty!” Su Xiaofan continued to name his price.
“Buddy, don’t mess with me. If you really want it, I’ll give it to you for one hundred and fifty.”
“Thirty. If you won’t sell, I’m leaving!”
Su Xiaofan stood up. He understood the psychology of people in the antique market far too well, because he himself was one of them.
“Hey, big brother, you’re my big brother. Who keeps lowering the price like that? Thirty, thirty it is, I’ll give it to you.”
The stall owner was nearly brought to tears by Su Xiaofan. If he’d known, he would have just accepted the other party’s one hundred yuan. He had insisted on trying to make a little more, only to end up lowering the price further and further through haggling.
“Fine, you’re not losing out either. I don’t just want this one piece. I’ll pick out some more and we’ll settle the bill together.”
Su Xiaofan had the stall owner bring over a small basket, put the Jun porcelain fragment into the basket, and then squatted down again.
“Alright, then I’ll treat it as wholesale for you.”
The stall owner immediately grinned when he heard that. He even brought Su Xiaofan a small folding stool so he could take his time choosing, while he himself picked up his phone and started slacking off again.
(End of chapter)
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