Next, Zheng Qiuda brought out several family heirlooms and asked Chu Chen to appraise them. Most of them were fairly ordinary. Only a Qianlong-era landscape famille-rose porcelain vase was passable.
Unfortunately, the porcelain was not an imperial-kiln piece, but merely a finely crafted folk-kiln work. Its market value was only one or two thousand yuan. If it had come from an imperial kiln, however, it might have been worth over ten thousand. That was one of the sorrows of folk-kiln wares.
Although his possessions were not fine antiques, to Zheng Qiuda, even if they were not antiques at all, they had still been passed down from his ancestors. He had to preserve them carefully and strive to pass them on intact to the next generation as witnesses to the family's history.
At this point, Zheng Qiuda brought out a box. After opening it, Chu Chen saw a small case enclosed in glass. Inside was a scene depicting the old streets and alleyways of the capital.
A quaint and elegant handmade quadrangle courtyard, crafted with exquisite skill, quietly separated the bustling streets from the secluded courtyard. Outside the courtyard were rickshaws, candied hawthorns, knife sharpeners, porters, people playing Go, people walking birds, people spinning diabolo toys, and all kinds of other customs of the capital, familiar and unfamiliar alike.
The entire scene was small, but worth savoring from every angle. In particular, the "performers" were all tiny monkeys that looked incredibly lifelike, adding even more charm to the work. This was precisely the traditional handicraft of the capital known as the "hairy monkey."
These days, few people probably knew about hairy monkeys. This unique folk art of the capital was said to have appeared during the Tongzhi era of the Qing dynasty.
At that time, a young shop assistant at a