POPPY, SHOPPING.(The Talk of the Town)(Hongqiao Market, situated in southern Beijing)

Once upon a time, the Great Wall was an obligatory stop on any state visit to the People's Republic. Foreign leaders stood on the structure, shook hands with Communist Party cadres, and took photographs. But that was before the rise of the Hongqiao Market. Situated in southern Beijing, Hongqiao doesn't look like much. The white-tiled exterior is ugly; the interior is cramped in a way that suggests that fire codes have yet to be deciphered. Its hundreds of tiny stalls have been arranged according to the mercantile food chain: live fish in the basement; electronics and watches on the ground floor; luggage, shoes, and clothing on the second; pearls on three, four, and five.

Last week, on the day before President Bush arrived in Beijing, venders had settled into the routine of the state visit. The market buzzed with reports of Bush, Sr., who had already been there to shop, having arrived in China a few days before his son in order to participate in a Sino-American trade forum.

On the ground floor, at stall No. 76, where fake Jacob the Jeweler diamond watches cost about thirty dollars, a vender named Pan Li had saved a digital photograph of George H. W. Bush on her mobile phone. Like everybody in China, she referred to him as Lao Bu Shi--Old Bush--to distinguish him from Little Bush.

"He's so tall!" the young woman said, proudly showing the photograph. "This is his bodyguard, the short man with the bald head. They went over there, to that Sony shop."

At stall No. 41, Jiang Meiyun, the proprietor, said that she had bargained, through a translator, with the former President. She held up a small device labelled Sony VOR Microcassette Corder M-800V. "I said it was four hundred yuan"--about fifty dollars--"and then the translator said twenty-five dollars," Jiang explained. "I said this is real; this is Sony--I can't sell it for that little. They said forty dollars, but I had already given them the real price. They didn't buy it."

Five stalls down, a merchant named Lin Qi had made a sale. He held up a box: Goldyip brand GL-802 Auto ...