Sitting in his Tianbaoge -- Shelter for Heavenly Treasure -store shaded by banyan trees, Liao Qiang sips a cup of tea while waiting for customers.

He is surrounded by hundreds of items including porcelain vases that he claims were made during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and wooden statues of Buddha, said to be made in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

There is not much commotion outside Liao's store or inside the few hundred similar stores in Liao's neighborhood in Xiguan Antique City, Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province.

However, the city is drawing many curio lovers, treasure-hunters, collectors and tourists from across the country and overseas.

Since its opening on the Lizhiwan Road, Xiguan Antique City has become one of the main antique business centers in China, in addition to Beijing, Shanghai and Xi'an.

Xiguan is an area west of the old Guangzhou, where buildings have preserved the traditional Cantonese architectural style. Grand and magnificent, the old buildings used to be the residences of merchants and officials.

According to Cheng Chiufai, vice-president of Guangzhou Xiguan Antique City Co Ltd, the whole area is testimony to the local history, which is why the founders chose it as the venue for developing antique businesses.

The location of Xiguan Antique City is right next to the protected zone of Xiguan Residences.

According to Cheng, in the past few years, the number of antique collectors in Guangdong has increased sharply to about 500,000, five times larger than the number at the start of 1990s.

Cheng said due to people's more affluent lifestyle, many have turned to collecting antiques either as a hobby or an investment.

Cheng, a lawyer before taking up the current job, does not hide the fact that he is a big collector of antiques.

When the antique city was completed in 1997, his enthusiasm for antiques made him give up an enviable job to take up the post of vice-president of the antique city.

His office is also his collection room which mostly contains ancient teapots including an ancient purple arenaceous ceramic example, which was made by Hui Mengchen, a famous teapot maker in the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Even though the teapot is worth over 100,000 yuan (US$12,000), Cheng did not hesitate to buy it.

The teapot's shape is not very special, but to Cheng, it is reasonable and worth it.

Pointing at the bottom of the teapot, Cheng said: "It's Hui Mengchen's autograph, a graceful handwriting."

Depending on his outstanding percipient for antiques, he judged the writing was written with a bamboo spike before the teapot was fired in the kiln, which was Hui Mengchen's working style according to historical records.

Cheng said real antique lovers would put most of their savings into their antique collection.

Liao Qiang is also an antique lover.

"I really love the business," he said. He has been interested in antiques since the 1970s.

"Acquiring antiques is not an easy job," said Liao. "We have to travel extensively, going to the countryside and mountain areas."

Consulting an antique almanac, Cheng said many costly antiques were sold to Western countries at the end of the Qing Dynasty. The East India Company was the biggest consumer, buying millions of pieces of antiques from many parts of China and exporting them from Guangzhou.

Slim profits

In the 1980s, rampant antique smuggling led to a large number of valuable antiques being spirited away to Hong Kong and onto European countries.

With antique collection fashionable in China's mainland during the past few years, many collectors in Xiguan have traveled to Hong Kong or abroad to buy back the valuables.

Quite a few shops sell antiques brought back from overseas to buyers from other provinces.

Liao admitted that the antique dealing business may not be all that lucrative, with a profit margin less than 10 per cent on average.

Some of his stocks have been in his shop for years but he does not seem to worry.

"The older the antiques are, the more valuable they become," he said.

Liao said most antiques are sold at tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan but the real curio lovers would not miss the money.

Both Cheng and Liao said a real antique lover would not be concerned about how much an antique costs. Instead, they pay attention to whether the antique matches the price.

Cheng said the shops in Xiguan Antique City mostly sell porcelain products made in the Qing Dynasty, and most are civilian antiques.

He said it is too difficult to collect official antiques, they usually are kept in museums.

Qing Dynasty artifacts are more popular in the market place, as they are much more exquisite than those made in more ancient dynasties, said Cheng.

In the midst of the antique collecting boom, experts have sounded alarms against counterfeit products, especially those sold by street venders.

According to a local report, a woman surnamed Li spent some 29,000 yuan (US$3,506) on 34 bronze, jade and pottery pieces of what the dealers claimed to date back to the period between the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC) and the Warring States Period (475-221 BC).

However, when she took the pieces to experts for analysis, she was told that the pieces were only replicas. She carried her purchase back to the seller's home, only to find that the dealer had already fled from the apartment building.

One expert from the local bureau of cultural heritage administration said it is difficult to seek out genuine antique pieces, because the genuine items do not sell cheap and can only be found at proper antique dealers. They are certainly not for sale from street venders, he said.

(China Daily September 13, 2004)