Our SOHO – small office home (well, not that small – over 450 sqm) is located right in the area largely preferred by foreigners, close to Sanlitun, the area between the 2nd and 3rd Ring Roads in the east of the city. Next to us are the Workers’ Stadium and Workers’ Gymnasium. Our street in Chinese is called “Gongti Xi Lu” – Workers Stadium West Road. Five minutes walk and we are in Morel’s Restaurant ( the “old” one), our usual restaurant to enjoy Belgian fries, mussels, steak, waffles and all the other goodies.
Sanlitun has remarkable concentration of restaurants, discos, bars, sauna houses, gyms and all you can wish for entertainment – including Poly Theater where many top performances are held (ballet, classical music, …).
No need to have car, we can just walk to any place.
Some years ago Gongti Xi Lu was a rather quiet street with the only landmark being “Gongti 100” – the world’s largest bowling center, 100 lanes in one single space. In the evening the gates of the stadium and gymnasium are used by groups of retired locals to practice “fan dancing”, classical dancing and others; a regular group of kids also train kungfu style moves.
Restaurants came and disappeared, mostly large Chinese eating halls. The street also has some foreign restaurants, one Italian (Metro – good pastas) and a crêperie (Celtic pancakes).
Night life was limited and a Latin “Club Flamengo” nightspot quickly disappeared.
Discos came to the Stadium area and became successful – Vics and Mix and others.
Babyface changed it all – a huge disco (two separate dance floors), high-tech, luxurious and with the latest techno music. Not for talking – you can hardly order, once I ordered a beer and got a gin tonic instead. The crowd is overwhelmingly Chinese who consume red wine mixed with soft drinks as well as Chivas Whisky with green tea (a lethal combination).
Bellagio, Green T. House and Le Quai (a 250 years old wooden Chinese house brought over from Jiangsu Province) became a hit. Then the rest followed – Cargo Club, Coco Banana, Cutie Club, Angel, Big Echo and the gay hangout Destination (now expanding – business seems great). Most regularly host foreign DJs. After 10 pm the traffic in “Gongti Strip” becomes gridlocked and cars are parked anywhere.
New restaurants are opening up – one I tried just a couple of days ago is called “Three Guangxi Men” – hot and spicy, as well as some creative hotpots.
The street is now being enlarged, trees have been cut, the nice park lovely installed last year bulldozed. Huge pipe ducts are installed – looks like power lines and telecom. No clue yet what they are up to. Looks like the city planning has no clue either because they “repaired” the whole street barely a year ago. What a waste of money… We sure miss all the nice old trees that made the street so charming. Is it because of the “Strip” or preparing for the 2008 Olympics? Both the Stadium and the Gymnasium are being modernized, they will be used during the Olympics for boxing and football.
The Gongti venues will be used in 2008
What a change, I for sure could not find something similar in Belgium. Now we can drink and party all night and get safely home as long as we manage to cross the street. Our SOHO does not suffer from the noise – we are isolated by two large buildings, one is under construction/demolition/construction since ten years and will become a complex of luxury serviced apartments, offices and shops. For the moment it makes sure I don’t oversleep – they start banging and drilling latest at 7am every day. The other is the well-guarded State Banking Regulatory Commission – two soldiers stand guard day and night.
The building under permanent “construction” seen from our other place in Julong (see the rubble from the construction), you can see at the left corner the red colours from Babyface
