The Ancient Cultural Street near the city centre is a pedestrian commercial street styled in traditional northern Chinese architectural forms — a common formula in Chinese cities that has been applied here with reasonable success. The street has antique dealers, art stalls, traditional crafts shops, teahouses, and restaurants in a setting designed to evoke the pre-modern commercial streets of Chinese cities.
The goods sold here range from reproduction antiques and decorative craft to genuine folk art and regional specialities. The ginseng shops, dried mushroom vendors, and traditional medicine stalls represent the economic geography of northeast China in commercial form. The street is livelier in the afternoon and evening when the teahouses fill and the outdoor stalls set up. It functions as both a local shopping destination and a tourist attraction without being overwhelmed by either function.