Xinshi Dian Jie is the commercial heart of Tibetan Kangding, the street where the trading tradition that made the city what it is remains most visible. The shops along this street sell Tibetan jewellery, silverware, religious objects — prayer wheels, singing bowls, thangkas, incense — alongside the mass-produced Buddhist trinkets and tourist goods that have expanded to fill the available shelf space. The quality of the genuine objects varies, and knowing what you are looking at helps considerably.
The serious silver and jewellery shops are staffed by people who can discuss the provenance and quality of what they sell. Turquoise is the characteristic Tibetan stone — Kangding's traders have dealt in it for centuries — and good pieces at fair prices are findable if you are willing to look carefully and negotiate calmly. The street is also where Tibetan pilgrims from across the region shop for religious items, which provides some check on the worst excesses of tourist pricing.
The concentration of shops makes this a good place to observe the living commercial culture of the Tibet-China border, which has not entirely been absorbed into the standardised retail environment of modern Chinese cities.