> click on the images for a larger version

The Sun Yat Sen fabric market is not exactly a place where you leisurely browse to find nice fabrics for your home sewing. Rather it’s a sprawl of gigantic buildings filled with booths each selling its specific product. Booths dedicated to eyelets, to zippers, to lace, to ribbons. To appliqués, to trimmings for sleeves and collars, to sequins, to laces, to needles, to clasps, to buckles, to glass buttons, to plastic buttons, to wooden buttons, to metal buttons, to elastic, not to mention to a huge variety of fabrics. The sheer volume of stuff is almost upsetting. It’s too much for my senses to handle. My brain shuts down in a panic. Not only is the amount of goods hard to deal with, also the flow of traffic inbetween takes place at a manic pace. Cyclists and tri-cyclists, laden with rolls of fabric, weave through the pedestrian traffic, their load sticking out, miraculously not knocking anybody off their feet. At a zebra crossing, traffic wardens blow their whistles incessantly, trying to stop cars, pedestrians, cyclists, carts from ignoring the red light. The sound of their whistles is just one soundtrack. On top of that is the constant honking of horns, yells of cyclists letting everyone know they’re coming through (no matter what), bicycle bells ringing, and let’s not forget the guys carting around large speakers blasting some popular Chinese music in order to sell CDs. This soundscape, combined with the complete anarchy within the traffic flow make for a pretty intense experience.