Mark Graham explores some exciting new centres of commerce in China’s capital city
The 2012 London Olympics are due to kick off in less than three months, but Beijing, the Chinese capital, is still remembered for its very successful hosting of the event in 2008. That landmark occasion saw the capital spring to life, constructing stunning architecture, opening world-class restaurants and developing a vibrant nightlife.
Cynics said that the momentum would be lost after the Games and that the city would lapse back into its slow and steady way of doing things. The reverse has happened – Beijing kept building taller and more extravagant towers, opening fabulous gourmet restaurants and cementing its reputation as the nation’s tastemaker in the area of arts, music and even fashion, the latter traditionally the preserve of supposedly more sophisticated Shanghai.
Look virtually anywhere and there are changes happening, or about to take place. The two heavyweight lifestyle debutants this summer are the Village North mall in Sanlitun, a Swire development, and Parkview Green, a glass-pyramid, mall-cum-hotel complex built by the renowned Parkview group.
At the other end of the scale, in the bustling hutongs (alleyways), the latest to be revitalised is Wudaoying, close to the Lama Temple, which has seen a flurry of new openings in the past year including a British gastro pub, along with coffee shops, boutiques, knick-knack outlets and craft stores.
Northern expansion
An exploration of Sanlitun is essential for every discerning visitor to Beijing. Within a three-block area, there are fine-dining restaurants, pizza parlours, pubs, cocktail lounges and, for the brave, hawker-style street food options.
As of this summer there is a new option: the Sanlitun Village North, which is fully operational after a draw-out opening period. The developer, Hong Kong-based Swire Properties, has enjoyed phenomenal success with the southern part of the mall, with its mix of mid-market stores, affordable restaurants and outdoor entertainment. The new section is decidedly more upmarket, focusing on designer brands from overseas, boutiques showcasing the best of local talent, art galleries for the well-heeled and refined restaurants.
It has been a fits-and-starts kind of opening, with a couple of grand events followed by a rather slow and gentle bedding-in spell. This summer will be the first when all the tenancies are taken, meaning there is now plenty to attract the visitor from overseas. Big name designer stores such as Alexander McQueen hold little appeal for people from other parts of Asia who can likely buy the same goods cheaper at home, but the novelty of being able to see local design talent in a well-lit, spacious mall is likely to prove alluring.
The widest range can be seen at BNC (Brand New China), a venture by local celebrity Hong Huang. The multitalented Hong, known as a publisher, writer, blogger, taste-maker and vigorous self-promoter, stocks the store with clothing, jewellery and accessories by local designers. The pieces on display – cashmere sweaters, slinky cocktail dresses, quirky sunglasses, witty jewellery – demonstrate that Chinese design has come a long way since the “Mao on a T-shirt” era.
The boutiques Decoster Concept, Woo, Wo2 and others all aim to demonstrate that China can produce more than cheongsams and Mao suits; the latest wave of designers do use silk and traditional motifs, but ensure they are relevant to a modern audience of fashionistas.
The upper-level art galleries, while hardly a match for those out at 798 art district and its near neighbour Caochangdi, do give a flavour of what the latest generation of Chinese artists are producing. Prices for paintings and smaller sculptures are significantly lower than the million-dollar prices paid for work by Yue Mingjun and Zhang Xiaogang. The mall set aside a generous 1,800 sqm space for the six galleries, all located on the upper floor on the eastern side. If time permits, make time for a stroll around Gallery Yang, Up Space, babù space, Aether Space, ZAN8 and Y++.
It was a deliberate decision to make the Village North more upmarket, with the focus on pricier stores, salons and culture. When mix-and-matched with its neighbour, the Village South, and the less grand, in-between mall known as Nali Patio, then the whole range of lifestyle options is covered.
The southern Village section, scene of major queues and occasional mayhem every time the Apple store launches a new product, has a couple of solid expat-oriented pubs, the Blue Frog and the Union Bar and Grille, the latter run by the people behind Dan Ryan’s in Hong Kong.
Getting to the classier Village North section involves negotiating a scruffy main thoroughfare – a bizarrely incongruous way to link the two malls. Just off this seedy strip is Nali Patio, home to the classy cocktail bar Apothecary, and the popular Spanish restaurant Aqua.
The first stopping-off point in the Village North proper is the Opposite House hotel, an international design-crowd favourite, home to the ground-level wine lounge Mesh, which offers deep sofas, dim lighting and overhanging mesh curtains – hence the name. But if the Opposite House’s radical design proves to be a trend-step too far, Sanlitun North has less out-there options, including another trendy Hong Kong-owned property, Hotel G, located a stroll away on the western side of the Worker’s Stadium.
When it comes to dining in particular, the emphasis is definitely towards the upper end of the market – there are plans for a stunning outdoor dining area, and Isola, an Italian restaurant chain that enjoys popularity in Hong Kong, will be opening this summer. It will join already established Transit, a restaurant that serves modern Sichuan cuisine (less fat, no MSG), Haru Teppanyaki and Sushi Bar, and Ju Song, which serves Revolution-era staples popular during Mao Zedong’s reign – rather ironic considering the location is a contemporary shrine to capitalist-inspired consumerism.
But this is China, where such contradictions abound. Who would have thought that the best American-style burger in the city would be served up by two Hong Kong Chinese advertising guys? Let’s Burger Plus, in the lower section of the mall, is a fun venue with simple food done well, a place that just about passes muster as a quick and casual business-lunch venue.
If that does not appeal, there are scores of other options in the Sanlitun area, including a restaurant which many say serves the best Peking Duck in the city. Duck de Chine, a 10-minute stroll from the Village North, is also run by a Hong Kong entrepreneur, a breed never slow to spot an opportunity and capitalise on it.
Old lanes, new life
Virtually every week sees the destruction of yet another Beijing hutong – the name for the alleyways where families traditionally lived in closed-off courtyard homes. There is much justified hand-wringing about the loss of the city’s cultural heritage – once gone, they can never be replaced – but it is equally relevant to point out that many of the homes are little more than slums, where the residents see no glamour in having to perform their daily ablutions in public toilets. The solution, of course, is to make the hutongs relevant to the modern world, but gentrifying all of the city’s crumbling hutong housing is mission impossible, so the decision is often taken to raze them.
The most famous hutong to be adapted for contemporary usage is Nanluoguxiang, near Houhai Lake, which offers a quirky mix of cafés, bars, boutiques and craft stores.
Within the space of only a few years it has become a major tourist attraction, visited by thousands – both locals and tourists – daily; however the inevitable fast-rising rents have forced small-scale entrepreneurs to look for pastures new. Many have settled in Wudaoying, also located in a traditional part of the city, close to the Lama Temple and the Confucius Temple.
Wudaoying is most definitely a work in progress – it cannot yet boast an international hotel on its doorstep – but the fun is to walk down its half-kilometre length and soak up the buzzing vibe of young entrepreneurial spirit in action. There are coffee shops galore that serve lattés and smoothies, polished-wood-floor boutiques displaying the work of local designers, and crafts and antique stores so crowded with goods that it is necessary to shimmy in and out.
There are also a couple of new restaurants that are worth considering for a casual dinner, including a British gastro-pub, a Greek restaurant, a Spanish restaurant in a courtyard setting, and a popular expat-hangout café-cum-bar. This area makes for a great night out, but is most definitely not a place to bring the chief executive for a contract discussion.
The most stylish of the bunch is Saffron, run by a local Chinese who learned to cook in Spain. The menu has tapas, Iberian ham and a classic paella of mussels, scallops and prawns flavoured with saffron, hence the restaurant’s name. Time has clearly been spent attending to the design detail, ensuring that there is a real air of rustic Spain in the unlikely setting of a Beijing hutong. There is the option of eating inside, or in the small and cosy plant-lined courtyard. Tapas options include squid rings, garlic and shrimp; other specials include homemade foie gras with apple, sirloin steak, sea bass and salmon.
Farther down the hutong is the Vineyard Café, a long-established favourite of the expat crowd, which serves simple fare such as pizza, pasta, jacket potatoes, sandwiches and that staple of homesick Westerners everywhere, the English-style breakfast.
The man behind the venture, Briton Will Yorke, decided that the time was right to open a second venture, the Vine Leaf, this time with a slightly more gourmet emphasis to the food. He shies away from the term “gastro-pub” but the fare is certainly more adventurous than the steak-and-burger format found in all the other freestanding pubs and bars in the capital.
Starters include watercress and stilton soup with the main courses featuring – naturally – fish and chips (made with a special batter), steak and ale pie, and cottage pie. A range of speciality beers is also among the lures – until recently, craft ales were something of a rarity in Beijing.
Visiting on a weekend, when the Vineyard and Vine Leaf both offer a brunch menu, allows the chance to fit in some culture before, or after, dining. The Lama Temple, a sprawling series of courtyards, is famous for its 18-metre-high Buddha carved from a single block of sandalwood. Also in the area is a temple honouring China’s greatest philosopher Confucius, with stone carvings featuring quotations from the great man himself.
His theme of filial piety and obedience would not find too much favour with the nation’s best-known, and most controversial artist, Ai Wei Wei, whose studio is in yet another up-and-coming Beijing area, the art zone of Caochangdi.
The rebel’s Fake Design studio, located behind high walls, is not open to the public but other galleries welcome browsers. Caochangdi began life as a more serene alternative to the tourist-thronged 798 art district and has developed into a place where more serious art buyers tend to browse. Among the galleries located there are F2 Gallery, Galerie Urs Meile and Pekin Fine Arts.
The closest hotel property to Caochangdi is the Grace Hotel, in the 798 art complex, though a new business-oriented Swire property, EAST, is due to open later this year. Until recently one drawback of Caochangdi – a rather major one for anyone with foodie inclinations – was the absence of decent places to eat. That should change in the near future when Max Levy, formerly the chef at the highly-rated Bei restaurant in the Opposite House hotel, opens a coffee shop, part of a larger factory complex that will produce meat, hams and breads.
Like so many others, Levy and his American-Chinese partner Leon Lee see opportunities galore. The only real constant in Beijing these days is the meteoric pace of change...
Getting in and getting around
The Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) is in constant expansion, with new services added all the time. The latest figures provided by BCIA put the number of flights using the facility at 1,400 daily, operated by more than 90 airlines and connecting the Chinese capital with 223 other airports around the world. One of the latest additions was South African Airways’ thrice-weekly direct service connecting BCIA with Johannesburg. JAL is set to fly its Dreamliner to BCIA later this year, and flag carrier Air China plans to commence four weekly flights between Beijing and Copenhagen in June.
The other great unavoidable in this city is the traffic jams. A measure whereby private cars were made to stay off the road one day a week was supposed to help alleviate the problem. It didn’t. Gridlock is the norm for most of the day, and even after rush hour there is still slow bumper-to-bumper traffic.
New subway lines and new carriages on existing lines were supposed to make underground travel more attractive but the system is still overcrowded. It is, however, dead handy for a visit to Wudaoying hutong, with the Lama Temple station, Yonghegong, on the north-south Line 5, giving direct hutong access. The closest subway to Village North in Sanlitun is Tuanjiehu station, on Line 10.
The subway has a flat charge of RMB2 (US$0.30) for any journey – making a subway ride out to the Summer Palace incredible value. An extension of Line 4 saw the building of Beigongmen station, a 10-minute walk from one of the city’s major attractions.
The flagfall for cabs is US$2, with the average inner-city ride costing US$4 to US$6. From the airport to downtown should be an absolute maximum of US$20 – any more and the driver is definitely attempting a rip-off. Cabs are all metered and a receipt is issued automatically at the end of the journey. There is no taxi dispatcher system in Beijing, and taxi drivers do not carry maps, making it vital to have detailed directions written down in Chinese characters, and a phone number for your destination.
When heading out for an appointment, leave ample time: an hour is the bare minimum for any cross-city journey, even a close-to-the-hotel destination can mean a convoluted trip around ring roads, which can eat up half an hour.
Addresses
Wudaoying Hutong
Argo Restaurant, 59 Wudaoying Hutong, tel 86 10 8403 9748
Café Indie, 24 Wudaoying Hutong, tel 86 10 6407 3361
Dong Liang Indie Design Collections, 26 Wudaoying Hutong, tel 86 10 8404 7648
Saffron Restaurant, 64 Wudaoying Hutong, tel 86 10 8404 4909 / 138 1122 6060
The Veggie Table vegan diner, 19 Wudaoying Hutong, tel 86 10 6446 2073
Vine Leaf, Jianchang Hutong, (just off Wudaoying Hutong), tel 86 10 6407 6308
Vineyard Café, 31 Wudaoying Hutong, tel 86 10 6402 7961
Village North
Art galleries are all on level N2 BNC, NLG 09a, tel 86 10 6416 9045
Decoster Concept, NLG 01 02, tel 86 10 6416 3258
Haru Teppanyaki and Sushi Bar, N4-30, tel 86 10 6415 2112
Ju Song, NLG 15, tel 86 10 6413 2275
Let’s Burger Plus, NLG 46b, tel 86 10 6415 2772
Transit, N4 37, tel 86 10 6417 9090
Shanghai Trio, NLG- 38, tel 86 10 6417 3606
Wo2, NLG 09b, tel 86 10 6417 6593
Woo, NLG 36a, tel 86 10 6416 0678
