"I'm just browsing, really," says Nelly Corne, from France, as she meanders through the rows of fine silk. When asked about what she thinks of the market's efforts to emphasize top-quality goods, she replies: "It doesn't matter to me. I'm just looking."
A nearby employee rests her head on a rack of silk and sighs. "It's not busy at all," says the vendor, who asked not to be named. She blames the lack of customers on the fact that it's a Monday, but when it's pointed out that the market's other floors - where vendors sell discount clothes, electronics, accessories and more - are bustling, she mumbles something under her breath and turns away.
On July 15, Xiushui Clothing Co Ltd officially relaunched the market with 196 booths emphasizing top quality, high-end silk and other garments. Xiushui's operators also promised a crackdown on fake brand-name products, and cleared out some 90 vendors selling counterfeit Armani, Hugo Boss and Ermenegildo Zegna. Vendors, who expected to lose hundreds of thousands of yuan because of the rearrangement, were paid 3 million yuan in compensation.
"Both the quality and quantity of our silk products are to be upgraded and expanded, and there will be no counterfeit brand-name commodities here," Wang Zili, general manager of Xiushui Clothing, told China Daily earlier.
But focusing on top-quality - and expensive - products might be a tough sell to foreign tourists, who come to the market looking for cheaper goods than they can find in Europe, North America and elsewhere.
Xiushui has been a popular destination for foreign tourists looking to haggle over counterfeit luxury goods and accessories since 1985. It is the Beijing area's third best-known tourist attraction, after the Palace Museum and the Great Wall. It once drew more than 100,000 shoppers per day, generating more than 10 million yuan in taxes annually from sales of more than 100 million yuan per year.
Today, tourists still flock to the market looking for low-cost custom-made suits, electronics and watches, and enjoy bargaining with the Chinese vendors - as advertised in virtually every Beijing guidebook tourists carry.
Some vendors have voiced their skepticism over the rearrangement. "Actually, have they (the Xiushui market operator) thought carefully (about the changes)?" one vendor told China Daily before the rearrangement. "Why do customers come here? Do they come for affordable and nice silk products instead of those with high price tags in luxury department stores?"
On this day, while a pin could be heard dropping on Silk Street, the market's other floors are hopping. Tourists from all walks of life haggle over everything from Calvin Klein underwear to children's toys.
Up on the fifth floor, Blaine Edmondson and his friends from New York City, on a two-week high school exchange in Beijing to study Chinese, browse the electronics section, inquiring about the price of video games and MP3 players.
Edmondson is looking for gifts for his friends and family, and a few things for himself - "sneakers, some clothes".
What about the high quality silk and other goods the market is now emphasizing? "I don't really care about that stuff," he says. "It doesn't matter that much to me. I wouldn't buy anything if it was expensive anyway."
While Edmondson looks for a bargain, other foreign shoppers welcome the market's reorganization. Steve and Deanna Green, for example, on vacation from Sacramento, California, aren't interested in cheap goods, especially knock-offs the market once carried.
"We were told to be careful of counterfeits and [over] pricing," Steve says. When told that the silk market had been rearranged to focus on high-quality silk and other goods, he says: "It's nice to know you're getting the real thing."
The only problem for the market's organizers is that Steve and his wife aren't really looking to buy anything - especially expensive silk. "We're just browsing," he says.
