Guangfu Museum Shop: This Belongs in a Museum ... Shop

While Houhai can be too touristy for the tastes of long-time Beijingers, there is now at least one quality souvenir shop that even locals can appreciate. That’s why we have officially declared Guangfu Museum the go-to classy knick-knack shop for the discerning traveler.

The store was founded by writer Ma Weidu and currently has locations in four cities across China. This particular store has three levels, where you’ll find a barrage of boutique textiles, tea accessories, jewelry, and statuettes from moderately priced to fairly expensive.
 

We loved some of their more affordable items, such as the bamboo tea containers (RMB 120) used for keeping your tea leaves fresh, the collection of scarves (RMB 155), and the woven basket purses (RMB 800). The bottom floor is where you’ll find most of the utilitarian objects like kitchen wares, notebooks, and fedoras.

In more ways than one Guangfu Museum is a mixture of a fancy gift shop and something like Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn owing to the fact that they have a little of everything. They even have a couple of weird items in the mix that don’t make sense, like a sonic denture sanitizer, mink oil, and about 30 different type of soap. One area of the bottom floor was dedicated to cheap hair bands that seemed out of place and were probably added to fill the space with color.

That being said, we’ll return come time for the holidays as there are plenty of fancy trinkets for that momma bear or crazy tea enthusiast in your life. I know for sure mine would totally dig the lucky cat slippers (RMB 1,800) from local footwear designer Bing Xu. You can’t really go wrong with gifting cat-themed apparel.

Daily 10am-10pm. 51-17 Di’anmen Xidajie, Xicheng district (8322 8818) 西城区地安门西大街51-17号

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Email: danielkippwhittaker@thebeijinger.com

Photos: Kipp Whittaker