Bargain Hunting

Bargain Hunting is a long urban antique-appraisal novel written by Jin Yuanbao Benzun. It was first serialized on Heiyan.com, runs about 2.2 million Chinese characters, and is complete. The title "bargain hunting" is an antique-trade term meaning buying an old item for a very low price because the seller undervalued it, when it is in fact worth a great deal. After being reborn and returning to the modern city, the protagonist Jin Feng relies on appraisal skill so refined it verges on the miraculous, starting out in places full of hidden currents—junk stalls, street markets, auction houses. With an eye that reads a hundred years at a glance, he appraises Qin steles and Zhou bronzes, metalwork and calligraphy, bronze and blue-and-white porcelain, jade and fine stones, again and again spotting true treasures among undervalued objects in the treacherous world of antiques where authenticity is hard to tell. In markets like Panjiayuan he deals with experts, collectors, brokers, and forgers, and must both uphold the trade's rules and bottom lines and make choices in the face of temptation and profit. As his eye and connections accumulate, he steadily establishes himself in the collecting world and rises to higher positions. The appeal of the work lies in the craft of the antique trade: how to read a porcelain's body and glaze, a painting's brush and ink, a jade's workmanship and staining; how to see through aging, splicing, and convincing fakes; and the trade's rules, slang, and human relations woven throughout. Beyond the thrill of appraisal, the novel also writes about the cultural threads behind traditional objects, and readers regard it as a combination of "trade story" and "street legend."