Rug-gedly handsome: Punters check the weaves. Inset: Qianmen Carpet Company. Photos: Courtesy of Henan Yilong Carpet Company and Wang Zi

I wasn't surprised when an Afghan friend of mine last week set up stall at his country's pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. Rugs after all define Afghan culture, and carpet exports sustain whole villages which weave them.

But I am surprised - he too - at how few rugs he sold. Chinese people aren't into rugs in the same way as Western collectors and auction houses fawn over Oriental carpets woven from the wool of desert-herded sheep.

The reason perhaps is because much of China never had a tradition of using, much less weaving, carpets. Yet it's less known that certain pockets of the country have in fact weaving traditions going back centuries. During a weeks-long exploration of carpet stores around Beijing, where local weaving methods and motifs were explained, I learned that local rugs are in fact sought out by collectors worldwide.

The surprising range of China's carpets becomes obvious at the city's oldest carpet store, Qianmen Carpet Co, currently located in an anonymous residential development next to the Tiantan Hotel. Opened in 1976 as a factory (which has since been moved south to Daxing district) the roomy showroom near the Temple of Heaven is overseen by friendly local woman Yan Ping, who draws her clientele largely from European executives and the Beijing embassy circuit.

Yan shows clientele square-shaped prayer rugs originally woven for Ningxia temples, rolled and stacked on the floor of the carpet warehouse alongside meters-long rugs from Inner Mongolia. Woven in simple blue and white geometry through the 19th century, the Mongol rugs decorated pastoral homes as well as the Qing royal court.

Yan said rugs from Xinjiang and Tibet are her top sellers. Like popular Turkish carpets, carpets from Xinjiang are easy to recognize for their traditional Uyghur motifs: looser open designs of floral medallions and pomegranates. Prices for the rugs range from 40,000 yuan ($5,850) (for rugs as old as 250 years) down to 4,000 yuan for copies made at the company's factory.

Tibetan rugs

Woven since the 11th century as sleeping spaces for the floors of humble homes and grand temples, Tibetan rugs have traveled far to the floors of Shunyi villas. Few people are as associated with Chinese carpets as Chris Buckley, proprietor of Torana Galleries in Shunyi and a well-known connoisseur of Tibetan art. A worldwide curiosity for Tibetan culture and the mystique of the high Himalayas has created demand for Tibetan rugs whose motifs regularly incorporate tigers and dragons.

The allure of Himalayan rugs has proven lucrative however for less honest traders. Immediately distinguishable by their rich colors and, to the expert eye, unique weaving method, most rugs sold in Beijing as Tibetan aren't in fact woven in Tibet - rather in Qinghai and Gansu, explained Buckley.

Local carpet collector Chris Andrews complained he was misled on a 5,000 yuan purchase from a Sanlitun Bei Lu carpet shop presented as a traditional Tibetan rug woven in Lhasa. He's since found that his 2008 purchase was likely woven in Qinghai with a mix of motifs from Ningxia and Tibet. "I got suspicious when I learned that Tibetan carpets are always small, because they were intended as sleeping rugs. Mine is 1.5 meters by 2 meters, far too large to be genuine."

That particular Sanlitun Bei Lu carpet dealer has moved on: The location currently sells Chinese furniture but Buckley sees plenty more product coming on the market to feed local demand for a piece of Tibet on local floors. "Even traditional rug weaving communities such as the Hui Muslim minority have in fact switched to making Tibetan-style rugs," he explained. Similarly, carpet factories in Tianjin hitherto exporting cheap weaves to Europe have in recent years switched to producing carpet passed off as Tibetan.

Carpet quality

Chinese rug factories reproduce carpet genres from around the world, quickly apparent if you visit Tom Tong's silk carpet shop in Yaxiu market, where more expensive silk carpets are woven almost entirely from Persian motifs. Buyers however must be vigilant of quality, explained Buckley. Fiber in mass-produced replicas is often "cheap scratchy" wool shorn from sheep on the country's lowlands. "Cheap wool tends to felt and mat after a few years." Similarly, cheap dyes run and fade, making the rugs "impossible" to wash, he added.

Stacked in neat piles on the floor of Torana's store in Europlaza, a mall near Beijing's airport, Torana specializes in new rugs woven only by family weaving concerns, explained Buckley. "Not factory operations." Good wool and authentic designs are other prerequisites of a Torana rug. Only a few sheep breeds produce carpet-grade wool, most of them high-altitude animals whose coats are necessarily long to survive sub-zero temperatures.

A solid market for antique Chinese carpets has drawn others into a local trade in China's native rugs. Among them Zhang Yongzhi, who sells a goodly selection of slightly less antique Chinese rugs from a shop somewhat misleadingly named "Tibet Carpet" just south of Hooter's bar and grill in Sanlitun. Inside the one-room store a 1.2 meter by 2 meter rug in the Mongolian style sells for 6,000 yuan. Other rugs from Ningxia and Gansu are pointed out by the friendly carpet collector who said he's using the store to draw trade to a much larger Zang Han Zhai carpet warehouse near Sanyuanli.

Prices are inflated by resellers who take advantage of local ignorance of carpet quality: Traders in the Shunyi area have offered him Afghan rugs for nearly 60,000 yuan, five times the Torana price tag for similar rugs. "There's plenty of fast buck merchants about," agreed locally-based carpet trader Wahapjan Ahmad, who himself sells Afghan carpets to Torana at half the Shunyi store's retail price.

While knowledgeable local carpet sellers like Zhang and Yan Ping regret the sharp practices in their trade and the lack of local enthusiasm for China's indigenous carpets, there appears to be growing demand among international buyers for the rugs. While visiting Qianmen Carpets I was lucky to find a hardback tome titled Antique Carpets of China, an out-of-print tome written by a local professor Lu Hongqi who goes to some lengths to document local carpet making history and techniques.

The book is proof that, while the country's factories churn out copies of variable quality, the reality is far more complex. The diversity of China's own weaving traditions are underappreciated but a visit to some of the city's carpet stores - and the budget to afford or copy one of these antiques - is time and money well spent.

gaofumao@globaltimes.com.cn

Floor coverings covered:

Silk or wool?

You don't have to look far in Beijing to find silk carpets, something of a local specialty. Sanlitun has numerous such stores, including Tom's Carpets on the third floor of cheap-and-cheerful Yaxiu market. Most are woven in Henan where one firm, the Henan Yilong Carpet Company has 2,600 carpet weavers making carpets from 500 distinct Persian-style designs. Large silk rugs sell for up to $20,000, far more expensive than their sheep-wool counterparts.

Carpet care

The dog peed on it, or your drunk friend spilt her Cabernet Sauvignon all over those Persian motifs. Itï‚'s not irreparable: While dyes on cheap rugs are in danger of running, cleaning a stain is usually as simply as blotting it with warm water on a tissue. Several local dry cleaners, such as ChemDry, offer specialized carpet cleaning services. Alternatively take the rug outside and use a hosepipe and cold water, while first spot-checking if the dye is likely to run. Wool is easier to clean than more fragile silk.

Don't get fleeced

Remember, you get what you pay for but first compare rugs and prices at several stores before buying.

Note the complexity of the design and colors these easily distinguish quality from low-end rugs.

Learn to spot machine woven rugs by the shiny, perfect consistency of the knotting and the patterns.

Don't buy online if you've not examined the rug first.

If you're buying a carpet that is woven with wool, make sure there's no nylon or other artificial materials in the weave.