New Chinese 'Antiques'
Draw Plenty of Interest

ZHONGSHAN, CHINA (Nov. 4, 2002) -- Standing amid piles of dirt-encrusted Chinese furniture outside their shop, Li Chan and Li Pang are debating just how honest they should be about the age of some ancient-looking wooden doors.

The paint on the 6-foot doors is peeling and the iron fixtures are corroded, but they have the aged finish that many antique hunters love. They were salvaged from old buildings in Northern China, says Li Chan. And the price is good, only $194.

Her partner Li Pang interrupts. "Don't tell them they are antiques," he says. "Say they are 20 or 30 years old."

Ms. Li demurs. "No, tell them they're older."

But Mr. Li's conscience is pricking him. The doors aren't antique at all, he admits. He explains that he scavenges old pine lumber from around China, fashions the wood into doors outside his shop and leaves them out to weather the timber and metalwork. Then comes a layer of paint, and "before the paint is dry we add mud," he says. "When we remove the mud, the paint peels." The goal is to make the product look, at the very least, 100 years old. Sometimes, the finished products look like they were built to hold back Mongol invaders.

Throughout southern China, thousands of factories and countless individuals are churning out brand-new furniture and accessories that will be passed off as antiques and later turn up with exorbitant price tags in antique shops from New York to Hong Kong. The fakery is fueled by the booming international market for antique Chinese furniture, and by the fact that China is running out of genuinely old pieces.

The Gu He complex here in Zhongshan, which houses the Lis' shop, is the nation's largest. Stalls and workshops sprawl from either side of a dusty road, a jumble of furniture and baubles spilling out into the fields: red lacquer wedding cabinets, carved courtyard screens, rectangular stools, Tang Dynasty terra-cotta horses and Tibetan chests.

Some of the offerings are the real thing, some are reproductions billed as such, but most are fakes with fabricated histories. Here, an undiscerning shopper scooping up a narrow altar table labeled "late Qing Dynasty elm wood," would be shocked to learn how hard craftsmen have labored to make it look old.

Dealers are increasingly part of the scam. As the supply of genuine antique Chinese furniture dries up, dealers who once traded in the genuine articles are switching to making replicas and selling them as old.

The southern province of Guangdong is the heartland of this growing industry. The area has a long history as an authentic antiques center, but "10 years ago, many people came from the north and set up temporary shacks on this vacant land to sell furniture," says Jin Xiang Yu, the entrepreneur behind Gu He. He bought the land in 1998 and started charging rent to the stall holders. Other immigrants moved in. "Then naturally, the place became a furniture market," Mr. Jin says.

Last year, Guangdong exported $2 billion of wooden furniture, half of it going to the U.S. Data on how much of that is marketed as antique aren't available, but dealers can charge far more for items that are believed to be old.

Heeding the call of this massive market, Chinese craftsmen are working harder and harder to fashion cheap new furniture into expensive antique items.

"It takes a long time to learn the tricks," says Deng Gao Fa, as he smooths clay on a table. His upstairs workshop is crammed with plastic buckets filled with dark chemicals and bags of silk yarn used to rub solvents into a stack of new wooden tables. Mr. Deng says the chemicals make the new wood more stable and less likely to crack, but he admits that the ingredients also serve to make the new tables look old enough that a dealer can present them as antiques. "We can even make it look older depending on what the clients want," says Mr. Deng, before family members working alongside him tell him to hush up.

All that hard work makes it difficult even for professionals to spot the fakes. "In the beginning ... they didn't have the chemicals and knowledge to make good fakes," says New York dealer William Lipton, who has been dealing in Chinese antique furniture since the late 1970s. "Now they have more savvy. When I go to China the fakes are so good, I tell them that I'm going back to my warehouse and I'm going to dissemble the piece -- if it's not right I'm going to bring it back. It's the only way I can tell."

Taipei dealer John Ang, who conducts seminars twice a year on Chinese furniture, attributes' the mainland craftsmen's expertise to the hundreds of pieces that go through their workshops every year. "They know exactly how to reproduce the joints and age the patina," he says.

Still, to the practiced eye, there are good fakes and bad fakes. Strolling through Gu He, Hong Kong antiques dealer Oi Ling Chiang picks out dozens of items that have been manufactured to look old. She determines immediately that doors from the Lis' shop are fake. Bending down to examine the smooth timber at the bottom of the doors, she sees the circular imprint of an electric saw. If the door was original, there would be wear and tear evident, and no signs of modern tools.

A display in the Gu He market in Zhongshan, China. The provenance of these products isn't known, but Gu He craftsmen produce a substantial amount of fake antiques.

At the Wan Feng Antiques shop, Ms. Chiang studies a Tibetan drum, which might once have been used by monks during religious ceremonies. The wood and leather instrument has a painted red and green dragon around its circumference. Sales assistant Cheng Yu Ping tries to convince Ms. Chiang that it's old. But Ms. Chiang isn't fooled. The painting is too colorful and the strong smell of shellac suggests that it was recently applied.

To demonstrate her honesty, Ms. Cheng points to floral-patterned Tibetan cabinets in another corner and declares that they are new.

"That's what kills me, because she says some are old and some are new, so you believe her," says Ms. Chiang.

The director of the Zhongshan Furniture Trade Association, a Mr. Deng (he wouldn't reveal his first name), isn't bothered by the deceptions. He believes the onus is on the buyer.

"The stores in the [Gu He] market in general sell genuine antique furniture," he says. "But it's up to the customers to bring along an expert to help them verify the antiquity of the piece. For tourists, they should not expect the furniture to be 100% guaranteed."

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