On the evening of January 29 a screenshot ricocheted through Shenzhen’s Shuibei trading chatgroups: spot gold had slumped from about RMB1,252 per gram to RMB1,142 — a drop of nearly RMB100 in minutes. The following morning, January 30, the rout widened: spot gold posted a single‑day fall in excess of 9%, the largest since 1983, while spot silver plunged as much as 36% intraday, an unprecedented one‑day move for that market.
By the weekend Shuibei’s subterranean bullion halls had become a live theatre of losses and opportunism. Stalls were crowded with anxious sellers looking to escape paper losses and cautious buyers hunting for bargains; one stall reported selling roughly 2 kilograms of gold in a single day, generating about RMB2.26 million in receipts, while another individual disclosed a sale of 2,404 grams at about RMB1,168.57 per gram, pocketing roughly RMB300,000 in profit.
For many market participants the shock was personal rather than abstract. An elderly woman sold a 10‑gram bracelet bought two decades ago for RMB80 per gram and walked away with a net gain of RMB10,000. At the same time, a younger buyer, who said she routinely purchases a few grams from each paycheque, bought 5 grams during the dip, echoing a common retail belief that gold is a long‑term store of value despite short‑term gyrations.
Silver’s swing was even more dramatic and more awkward for local dealers. The metal had surged from about RMB11.44 per gram in November 2025 to a peak of RMB32.382 per gram on January 30 — a rise of roughly 183% in a matter of months — and then collapsed to roughly RMB25–26 per gram in some Shuibei quotes by February 1. Dealers described heavy losses on large 15‑kilogram bars that were worth about RMB500,000 before the drop and roughly RMB400,000 afterwards, and several shops said they were refusing to take in more silver for fear of being left holding steeply devalued stock.
The market dislocation prompted a swift response from incumbents in China’s financial system. Major retail banks adjusted service thresholds and tightened onboarding for gold accumulation products: Construction Bank raised its minimum gold‑savings deposit to RMB1,500 from February 2, while other banks lifted entry points and reinforced risk‑assessment measures. Banks also issued guidance urging retail clients to avoid panic trading and to consider longer horizons and diversified allocations.
Analysts and futures researchers broadly attributed the sell‑off to an overheated rally and a sudden unwind of speculative positions. Researchers pointed to the extreme “slope” of recent gains and to indicators of overbought sentiment, and linked the timing of the crash to broader asset‑price weakness after disappointing US tech earnings on January 29, which triggered a cross‑market repricing and forced de‑risking among leveraged participants.
The episode exposed structural tensions in China’s retail precious‑metals market: heavy retail participation, thin physical liquidity at corners of the market, and a growing reliance on fast flows of speculative capital. Dealers in Shuibei are now waiting for a new equilibrium even as some retail investors treat the slide as a buying opportunity and others decide to sell and accept crystallized losses.