REVITALIZATION OF 'TIIE MARKETPLACH THIE STATE AND 'THE MARKETPL.ACE The food markets in Nanjing provide a vehicle for studying the complex, si multaneously cooperative and competitive relationships that developed be tween the state and private enterprises throughout China in the i ggos. Each food market is a collection of hundreds of individual entrepreneurs. Thev are regulated by a commercial administrative office that is a branch of the government, which in each market is responsible for licensing vendors, pro- lecting legal transacTions, protecting the rights of consumers, mediating dis- putes between vendors, and maintaining the cleanliness of the market. Al- though the state no longer issues food coupons to consumers, the influence of the state in the food purchases of consumers is still visible and profound When the"free"markets for food first appeared in Nanjing in the early 1g8os, the vendors were farmers who brought their own wares to the nar- kets, selling the produce that they had grown in excess of their commitment to the state at whatever price the market would bear. By the mid igos,ow- ingto the monthly fee of several hundred renminbi to rent a space in the market, the farmers had been largely replaced by middlemen who buy pro- duce at Nanjing's wholesale markets. Although many of these middlemen are froim farm families, often from northern iangsu or nearby Anhui Pro- vince, they sell other families' crops that they acquire daily from Nanjing's wholesale market 1o Some food markets in Nanjing provided a special area where farmers could vend their own wares for a daily rate. Consumers often preferred to buy di rectly from the farmers, believing that farmers are more trustworthy than ven- dors. Yet it seems clear that in the future consumers will have fewer oppor- tunities to buy directly from farmers as commercially organized middlemen take over the vendor spaces. In 1996. when the then biggest indoor food mar ket opened in Nanjing, the first of eight planned for that year, businesspeo- le from Shanghai, Suzhou, and guangdong had ordered counter space. The state also played the leading role in deciding where new markets were to be located and which markets were allowed to operate. In older neigh- borhoods, markets were usually conveniently located and within bicycling or even walking distance from peoples homes. In the newer residential ar- eas, food markets were distributed much more sparsely. The location of food markets has a fundamental effect on the food shopping patterns of con- 10. Qu Huahan and Yuanshen Wu 1996. In the i ggos farmers could be seen arriving at the Nanjing food markets, sometimes carrying hundreds of kilograms of vegetables on their shoulders. Because they risked being fined by the market administrators for sellin ng wares illc gally. these farmers often were forced instead to sell their wares to the market vendors for low prices to avoid paying a fine and having their goods confiscated 11. Wang Yong and Zhi Long 1996