The Shenyang Dao antique market is one of the best places in northern China to spend a weekend morning hunting for curios. The street fills with vendors selling everything from genuine Qing-dynasty porcelain and carved jade to Chairman Mao badges, old coins, pocket watches, vintage cameras, and frankly dubious "antiques." Part of the appeal is that you genuinely cannot always tell what's real and what isn't — and neither, often, can the sellers.
The market runs on Saturday and Sunday mornings and is most lively in the early hours. Come before 10am for the best selection. Bargaining is expected and prices are negotiable, sometimes dramatically so. Even if you buy nothing, walking the rows is entertaining — the diversity of objects on display is a kind of compressed history of the twentieth century. Cash only.