12.08.08

Nitpicking the SCMP on Nanluoguxiang and Houhai

Posted in Beijing at 14:25 by Nator

The South China Morning Post had an article last week whining about the profileration of bar streets in the hutongs and how they were destroying the character of old Beijing. Not exactly an original topic, but I wanted to comment on parts of it:

It’s hard to believe now, but Beijing was once a nightlife desert. In the 1980s, foreigners living in the city who wanted an evening out had little choice of where to go. “A few hotels had bars. Some of the embassies had them too and they’d put on events on Fridays. It was a very small town,” says Frank Siegel, an American who came to the mainland in 1981….

Traditional hutongs such as Nanluoguxiang have become home to bars, restaurants and boutiques, while the area around the Shichahai lakes, better known as Houhai, is firmly established as a bar zone.

But the transformation of Beijing’s entertainment scene has come at a cost.

The village-like atmosphere that expats remember from the early 90s is gone. The character of entire districts has changed, nowhere more so than Houhai. The lake near Beihai Park is surrounded by some of the oldest hutongs and siheyuan (courtyard houses) in Beijing….

In early 2003, the outbreak of Sars kick-started Houhai’s metamorphosis into one of Beijing’s nightlife centres. “People wanted to be outside rather than indoors and many of them weren’t able to work, so they started to spend the day in Houhai. Then some businessmen realised that was a good opportunity to open bars and restaurants,” [Bai Feng] says.

No offense to Bai Feng, owner of No Name Bar, but I think it was clear a couple of years before SARS where Houhai was headed.

Perhaps the worst aspect of Houhai now is the cookie-cutter nature of the bars. Just as scores of towns across the mainland start to look alike thanks to uniform development, many of the bars and clubs in Houhai, as well as elsewhere in Beijing, are indistinguishable from each other….

A group of cookie-cutter bars all in one spot was what made the old Sanlitun South Street so great.

“The easiest thing to do in China is to copy a place that is making money. It always works,” says Nee Bing, owner of the popular Song Bar, which has an innovative interior inspired by the Yuanyang rice terraces of Yunnan province.

Beijing should follow the example of Shanghai, where thriving nightlife areas such as Taikang Lu are strictly controlled, he says.

“The local government keeps a very close eye on Taikang Lu and they’ve planned it well. I wanted to open a restaurant there earlier this year. When I told the local officials it would serve southwestern style food, they said, ‘Sorry, we can’t allow it. We have a Vietnamese restaurant there already. It’ll be too similar’. That wouldn’t happen in Beijing,” says Nee.

Great idea, Nee Bing–let the government strictly control Houhai and only allow one type of restaurant in each bar. Beijing already has that; it’s called Lucky Street. Actually, Houhai already has it as well; it’s called Lotus Lane.

That Beijing authorities haven’t learned any lessons from what happened to Houhai is apparent in the way Nanluoguxiang has been allowed to develop. A short walk from Houhai, the 800-year-old hutong is now a traffic-clogged strip of identical bars, cafes and clothes and jewellery shops.

Nee sees that as a wasted opportunity.

“If Nanluoguxiang had lots of different shops and bars, then everyone would go there. It would be more popular than Sanlitun. But it doesn’t, so the people who go there tend to be tourists,” he says.

Lots of people do go to Nanluoguxiang, and I think it’s a good thing that it’s not as popular as Sanlitun. And it’s got all kinds of establishments, including It’s several ironic China t-shirt designers, coffee shops, a wide range of bars and restaurants, hostels, and at least one swank boutique hotel, a famous Chinese dairy and cheese snack shop, the Central Academy of Drama, and plenty corner shops selling snacks and cigarettes. 

Just like Houhai, Nanluoguxiang has been transformed in a few years from an old-style neighbourhood into something resembling a theme park.

Nanluoguxiang is a commercial hutong running north-to-south through a series of residential hutongs running east to west. Stepping off the main drag and onto the side streets, one finds that the traditional neighborhood is largely intact.

“It’s good for business, but the atmosphere has completely changed,” says Wang Haiyan, who opened the first pub in the hutong, the Passby Bar, in 1999. “It’s like a fake hutong now. Most of the people who lived here have moved out. I think there are only three or four families living on the hutong now.”

Wang’s Passby Bar is surely the main reason Nanluguxiang has become what it is, and thus the main reason that most of the people have moved out. He’s cashing in just as much as anyone else, having added a gift shop and upscale restaurant. 

As their houses can fetch rents of up to 250,000 yuan a year, it is no surprise many residents have gone.

Despite the worsening economy, there’s little sign that the rush to open new bars is slowing. With Houhai and Nanluoguxiang saturated, the nearby area north of the Drum Tower and Gulou Dongdajie is tipped to be the next hot spot.

However, Nee predicts the hipsters will head further out to the suburbs.
“All the cool things happen in places where the rent is low,” he says.
“That’s why Berlin is the club capital of the world.”

After savoring that sublime final paragraph for a moment, consider this: For all its problems, Nanluoguxiang is the best solution yet for solving the hutong dilemma and retaining old Beijing’s identity, whatever that means. Everyone gets a good deal out of it:

• Hutong residents: Instead of being forced out by a large developer and given a nonnegotiable settlement, property owners on Nanluoguxiang can sell or rent out their property for a fair price. 250,000 RMB a year sounds like a pretty good deal, and the price will surely go up in the future.
• Preservationists: Unlike most of Beijing’s other historical sites, the attraction of the hutongs comes largely from the people going about their lives there. Strict preservation–that is, turning entire hutongs into museums–is not a viable option, and with standards of living rising throughout Beijing, fewer and fewer people are willing live without a toilet in their home and other modern amenities. The best way to preserve the look and feel of the hutongs is to gentrify them.
• Tourists: These days the hutongs are popular enough that most tourists spending a few days here will get to see them. But few want to spend more than an hour or two in an authentic hutong. At some point they’ll get hungry or thirsty; with places like Nanluoguxiang, they will actually be willing to spend some money in the hutongs instead of back at their hotel or on Wangfujing. Some will even consider finding a hotel there.

It’s also worth mentioning that Nanluoguxiang has been this successful despite often being clogged with cars. If north-south traffic can be blocked (while still allowing cars through the east-west hutongs. The government has shown good judgement in laying a nice cobblestone-esque surface keeping store signs tasteful; keeping the cars out would be another step in the right direction.

If anyone has a better idea for preserving the hutongs, I’d like to hear it.

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