Spring is coming along with not only more sunny days but also weekend markets around the town - a good time for shoppers who wish to find something different from what supermarkets may offer.

At Dreams Factory Nostalgic Flea Market at the basement floor of Xintiandi Style, shoppers may find affordable toys, clothing, accessories priced from 5 yuan (80 cents) to high-end haute couture jewelry with a price tag bearing six digits.

"It's amazing here - I feel like I'm falling into my grandmother's wardrobe at one stall and revisiting kindergarten at another," says Liu Baochan, a 27-year-old office clerk. "Look at this toy piano - it could have been a luxury for girls when I was a kid - and you rarely find them in department stores nowadays." And the piano still works.

Here you'll also find desk lamps from the 1980s, thermoses from the 1970s, vintage bicycles, hobby horses and music boxes that appeared in 1960s movies.

According to the stall owners, they gathered the goods from all over the world to avoid the waste of beautiful things.

At Yo-xi, a stall selling steampunk jewelry with components dismantled from broken watches, buyers gather in front of the display desks to guess at how the designer transformed a pocket watch into a pair of cufflinks.

Wang Xing, a Yo-xi stall owner, says it is quite interesting to interact with buyers because they are inspiring, and original works may fill in the gap between people's imaginations and items offered in shopping malls.

Vintage dresses filling racks attract buyers from all over town to find an old piece that fits into today's fashion dictions.

Student Bai Wenting, 16, says: "I looked at an Anna Sui one-piece dress and thought, wow, this would have been fabulous for a young lady in the 1980s, but it is still a fabulous dress for me 30 years later. It would be a waste if dresses like these were thrown into the dustbin never to be worn again."

Flea market organizer Yu Sisi says there are also stalls from a pop-up store at one of the style hubs in downtown Shanghai, and the market will have more stalls covering a wide range of items on March 8.

"There will be about 50 stalls on the second weekend of March, and visitors may take pictures amid the vintage atmosphere, transporting themselves to the good old days," Yu says.

wuyiyao@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 03/02/2014 page9)