Each Thursday in a part of Tianjin not yet colonised by building sites can be found the Shenyang Street open-air antique market. I was there early one mid-winter’s morning, wandering around the alleys and lanes where the market sprawled, clocking the chancers and solid citizens milling about, the smells of incense and smoke from cooking fires mingling in my nostrils.
Drifting aimlessly I turned into an alley: paintings, old and new, crass and fine, on canvas, board and paper, plastered the alley’s decaying stone walls; the artists, indistinguishable from the hawkers, hovering nearby in hopes of a sale. I stopped at a pile of large water-colours spread out around the feet of a wiry old painter, a local Georgia O’Keefe sans teeth: her compositions, on rice paper, were of chickens and cockerels, and visibly superior to the efforts of her fellow artists. I picked out one of the cockerel paintings and asked how much she wanted for it; we stood around in the cold, bargaining in a friendly way, eventually settling on half of her asking price. After having a good look at the painting after I returned home I regretted not paying in full the small amount the old lady had asked for what was a very accomplished piece of work.
Most of the rest of the market was laid out on bedsheets and old blankets arranged on the sidewalks, the proprietors’ faces as intriguing to me as what they were selling. Passing by a line of vendors, an endless assortment of wares laid out at their feet, my eye was caught by a small porcelain bowl amongst a collection of oddments; I took off my gloves and picked the bowl up; it was so finely wrought that when I held it up to the light to check for blemishes I could see the shadow of my fingers through its surface. I pulled a calculator from my bag and offered it to the seller, curious about his asking price: he tapped in 800; at 6.85 yuan to US$1.00; I winced and pocketed the calculator, but I continued to hold on to the bowl. Its owner said something which I took to mean, “How much will you give?” I took the calculator from my pocket and tapped out “50,” which made him and the proprietors of the two bedsheets next to him roar. 600 yuan was his next best offer; 55 was mine. More laughter. Then silence; calculator back in my pocket again. More chat, unintelligible to me; calculator out again. My final hopeless offer was 60 yuan. Silent shuffling in the cold, then more palaver between himself and his neighbors, but no laughter. Very gently, I placed the bowl back on the ground and put my gloveless hands in my jacket pockets.
Looking into bowl man’s eyes, I took my hands out of my pockets, bent my arms outward a little, palms upward, and shrugged. After a protracted pause he pointed to the bowl, nodded, bent down and picked it up, then wrapped it in a piece of old newspaper and handed it to me.
I gave it to my wife for a Xmas gift, still in its original wrapping. It lives now on a shelf in the living room, next to an anonymous Buddha and an exquisite woodcarving of Guan Yin, the female aspect of Avolokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion. I fill the bowl with water once week.
Endless Buddhas 
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