Yanzhao Metropolitan Network www.baiduhou.com —— Sanlitun in Beijing is a place full of temporary feelings. Here it seems there is no past, no future, only the throbbing present. It doesn't shoulder any great historical mission, but it does an excellent job in its humble work: creating desires and satisfying them. No matter where the wanderers come from, they are all like sailors who have just docked at sea. They enjoy wine, meat, and sex here, establish short-term employment relationships, fleeting romances, and fragile friendships. None of them want to stay here for long. Sailors, after satisfying their desires, naturally jump back on their ships and continue wandering. Sanlitun is like an island that has been parachuted into Beijing, enveloped by an exotic artificial bubble.
For unofficial history, Sanlitun is a rough record: "A village three li away from the Ming Dynasty Beijing city wall." For writer Feng Tang, Sanlitun represents six years of middle school life from 1984-1990. Deep in the south street of Sanlitun was his middle school, Beijing No. 80 Middle School. To the north were the candy factory, Beijing Union University's Mechanical and Electrical College, the Chinese Acrobatic Troupe, the prosthetic limb factory, and further north, today's Sanlitun North Street. At that time, it was the "Sanlitun Auto Parts Street." Writer Feng Tang established his worldview and values there and also built a strong physique. Fortunately, he was instructed by a military enthusiast PE teacher who was deeply interested in the history of the Sino-Japanese War and believed that "in the 21st century, there will inevitably be a war between China and Japan." He felt it was his responsibility to prepare the Chinese nation for this war. Out of twelve months in a year, except for June, July, August, and September, he forced Feng Tang and his classmates to run circles around the school. They ran out of the school gate, to Chaoyang Hospital, to the City Hotel, to the intersection of Sanlitun South Street and Sanlitun North Street, to Zhaolong Hotel, and back to the school gate. When they reached the intersection of Sanlitun South Street and Sanlitun North Street, they approached what the PE teacher called the "extreme point." Feng Tang persisted, with his tongue hanging down, looking around. He saw the temporary buildings on Sanlitun North Street, saw the beginning of selling alcohol, and saw the small shops shaped like beer glasses. For musician Huang Liaoyuan, Sanlitun was born in 1995 and died in 2005. It was a series of avant-garde bars in Beijing: White House, Hidden Tree, Mustard Shop, Swing... Huang Liaoyuan could never forget Sanlitun South Street because almost all his business was discussed in these bars. The people he dealt with could only find him in the bars, all his girlfriends met him in the bars, and only in the bars could he meet people. This is the historically significant Sanlitun. These fragments of history may not be long-lasting, but they disappeared without a trace.
After 2008, Sanlitun radiated outward with "Sanlitun Village" at its core. This is a commercial real estate project with an investment of about 4.8 billion RMB, held by Swire Properties with 80% shares and GIC Real Estate China Fund with 20% shares. It is divided into a southern area and a northern area, forming a block-style, open shopping center with a total land area of about 53,000 square meters and a total building area exceeding 130,000 square meters. It consists of 19 contemporary architectural layouts, approximately 300 stores, restaurants, and bars, 5 galleries covering nearly 1,800 square meters, two parking lots with a total of 880 parking spaces, and a hotel,瑜She, with 99 guest rooms.
You can take buses 113, 115, 406, 416, 431, 701, or 758 to the Sanlitun station. You can get off at the Tuanyi Lake subway station and walk west for 200 meters. If you drive, turn north on the small road at the boundary between the western part of Sanlitun Village and the Yaxiu clothing market, heading to the parking lot, which splits into two queues: when the Yaxiu ground parking lot charges 2 RMB/hour and the Sanlitun Village underground parking lot charges 5 RMB/hour, the Yaxiu queue can reach up to five cars, while the Sanlitun Village queue can slowly pass at a speed of 10 kilometers per hour; when Yaxiu raises its price to 10 RMB/hour, the Sanlitun Village queue can reach up to eleven cars, and the other queue disappears. Of course, you can also take a taxi. At the intersection of Sanlitun Road and Gongti North Road, you'll find Beijing's most irascible taxi drivers. On weekend evenings, the intersection gets completely jammed, with queues reaching up to 1500 meters. The red light lasts three minutes, and the green light lasts only thirty seconds, allowing only five cars to pass if they go full speed. However, taxi drivers must negotiate with crowds of pedestrians, cyclists, and tricycle riders who never follow traffic lights, striving to become one of the two cars that successfully pass through. Meanwhile, they drive with one hand and handle money with the other, carefully identifying foreigners' strange Chinese accents, enduring back pain, ulcers, and hemorrhoids, as well as an uncontrollable desire to crash their car into the iron fence of Sanlitun Village and then drive away.
The rental price in the northern area of Sanlitun Village is between 95-100 USD/square meter/month; the average rental price in the southern area is around 70 USD/square meter/month. But if you're persistent enough, you can get a better lease price. Owner Sun Yu of "Fish Eye Coffee" spent a week stationed at every entrance of Sanlitun Village, manually counting foot traffic with a counter from 9 am to 11 pm. His statistics enabled him to secure rent below the average price of prime locations.
Swire Properties has ambitions to renovate Sanlitun, intending to transform it from a bar street into "a dazzling hub of trends attracting the most fashionable, creative individuals from both China and abroad." It also welcomes others outside of this group. Sanlitun Village is an interconnected open area with squares, alleys, and gardens that can satisfy all sorts of peculiar needs: you can purchase a dinosaur fossil from the Late Cretaceous period, a Jinzhou Dragon fossil, 2.2 meters high, 7 meters long, weighing 500 kilograms, price negotiable; or go to the Agua restaurant in the garden there to eat a rare lamb shoulder, only 150 grams. You can listen to a Pulitzer Prize winner's lecture on post-dictatorship society at the Bookworm cafe in the south, then empty your mind at Punk Bar in the north with DJ Wordy's meaningless electronic music. You can buy socks at Uniqlo for 69 RMB for three pairs, or purchase a formal dress at Lanvin, preparing to spend at least 40,000 RMB. You can bring your own drinks with a thermos and stroll around, or order the signature drink at Mesh: 1988 Petrus, priced at 34,500 RMB per bottle. You can spend nothing and simply sit in the square in the north area, becoming one of the 1,500 tourists per hour; or enter Beijing's first Apple store, becoming one of the 500 people per hour, enjoying its 80 Mbps broadband and asking questions to the nine "geniuses" at the Genius Bar. If it happens to be the day the iPhone 4 is released, the Apple store closes early, with cash scattered on the floor amounting to millions of RMB. A few employees count until their hands ache, and one sighs: "If only we had 1,000 RMB denomination bills!"
Around Sanlitun Village, some places bear the name "Sanlitun" but do not truly belong to it, such as "Sanlitun SOHO," which gazes across Gongti North Road in solitude. Other places, unnamed, are the core of Sanlitun. A street connects the northern and southern areas of Sanlitun Village, nicknamed "Small Street," "South Street," "Fake Alcohol Street," or "Gutter Oil Hot Pot Street." If you can take a step of 80 centimeters, it takes 223 steps and four minutes to walk from south to north. It is less than five meters wide, flanked by the neighborhood "Happy Village" and another side of temporary buildings, crammed with over 50 shops and about ten mobile vendors selling cigarettes, barbecue, and hot pot. At first glance, Small Street appears chaotic, dirty, and repulsive, yet it exudes an irresistible charm, much like a strong personality that draws you closer to investigate. And for some people, they linger here for long periods; Small Street becomes their life.
The manager of the bar The First Floor, Jack, a "godfather"-like figure, is rumored to have extensive connections and can resolve any criminal incidents within the Small Street domain. He is also very hospitable, hosting a loose "Manager Club" from 3 am to 5 am, where nearby bar or restaurant managers gather. Jack greets them in English with a London accent and offers exhausted guests a drink.
Xiao Peng, 69 years old, came from Henan to Sanlitun fifteen years ago. Every day, he sells handmade woven grasshoppers and lanterns on Small Street. Because he has been there for so long, he is the only vendor allowed to sell inside bars and restaurants. Every foreigner wanting to flirt with Chinese girls buys his grasshoppers. One year, he was filmed in a Motorola mobile phone advertisement, appearing on screen for three minutes and earning 2,000 RMB. He decided to indulge himself by taking the subway once, but his money was stolen. Tarot card reader Miss Wang set up her fortune-telling stall on Small Street. Eighty percent of her clients are women, all inquiring about love. She tries her best to give them hope regarding love. Security guards watched and struggled for at least ten minutes before finally deciding to drive her away. Barbecue seller Big Liu pays 3,200 RMB monthly in "unmentionable fees," averaging 400 RMB profit per day. "One yuan per skewer? Lamb costs six yuan per catty, could it really be real lamb?" After saying this, Big Liu picked up a lamb skewer from his grill and ate it. Mary from the small nail salon sees at least three talent agents and movie product placement merchants discussing business while getting their nails done. A middle-aged woman with dyed blonde hair always wears a pink top and jeans, holding a Yanjing beer bottle drinking at the street corner. Rumor has it she is a prostitute, deaf and mute, from North Korea...
Sanlitun Village and the "Small Street" connecting the north and south form a mutually complementary, sufficiently mixed community. This is precisely the essence of the city, no longer constrained by overly single-functional areas. Islands connect with islands, whether old residents, newcomers, or transitional populations, each finds their place.
Sanlitun becomes a place that never sleeps. At 9 am, a pastry chef at Colibri Cupcake begins making cupcakes in the glass house, sunlight making the cream look shiny. He makes more than ten varieties of cupcakes, all destined to be sold out by 7 pm. At noon, the herbal workshop Hong Kong-style tea restaurant experiences its first peak of customers, lasting until 1:30 pm, with waiting tables always exceeding five. By 3 pm, Fish Eye Coffee has already sold over 60 cups of cappuccino. At 6 pm, "Sanlitun Noodle Shop" on Sanlitun Small Street starts having people wait in line, requiring passing through the kitchen to compete for 30 seats with directors, screenwriters, or celebrities. Fifteen minutes later, the noodle shop fills up. The Spanish restaurant Agua in There Garden welcomes its peak hours from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. Head Chef Jordi Valles spends 45 minutes preparing a plate of Lobster Rice, one of the restaurant's best-selling dishes. Jordi remains calm; his record is serving 140 tables in one day. Manager Cobain of Mesh finishes the pre-opening inspection, having a gap from 9 pm to 10:30 pm before welcoming the crowd. Many people come for the bartenders, among whom one is humorous, one diligent, and another is a cocktail competition champion, all handsome and having their regular customer base. At 1 am, the bar "Youth" on Small Street begins filling up with regulars. Wang Zi experienced two owners of Youth and feels nostalgic for the old Youth: it was like a teahouse for young people, where they gathered to share experiences. Nowadays, "Youth" is more about sharing alcohol, sex, and money. But Wang still loves "Youth," starting to dance on the central table at 1 am, where forty people gather. She isn't the most graceful dancer but certainly confident. Beside her, a girl is awed by her boldness and asks, "Sister, are you from Inner Mongolia?" At 5 am, the crowd on Small Street starts dispersing. The manager of The First Floor, Jack, closes the bar door and returns to his home in Shifoying, spending only four hours a day with his wife. At 6 am, two sanitation workers from the Sanlitun Street Office begin cleaning Small Street. A jute bag can hold 180 beer bottles, filled six times, plus one bag of Red Bull cans and six piles of other garbage. In the morning, Sanlitun is the clinking sound of cleaning wine bottles and a putrid smell. However, after 9 am, it regenerates anew, starting another cycle.
Sanlitun has never held a grand celebration or recorded riots, but it seems perpetually crazy. The police station in Sanlitun stays lit all night, once mistaken by a drunk man for a unique nightclub. There are 54 police officers and other staff responsible for seven large communities including Sanlitun, over 1,500 enterprises, and more than 110 embassies, consulates, and international organizations. They receive reports of stolen phones daily.
Sanlitun also breeds love. Some love stories are very short, lasting only one night. Others are longer. Bartender Clinton witnessed a Spaniard changing girls daily under his watch, until one day the changes stopped on one girl, who remained unchanged for five years. They married and now have a two-year-old daughter. Some love stories last over thirty years, like the elderly couple at the Iranian restaurant, married over thirty years, refusing to open a branch because they've never been more than five meters apart.
People from all corners of the world come to Sanlitun. They come from Henan, Shandong, Hunan, Zhejiang, Guangxi... All have an English name. Others come from the US, UK, Colombia, Germany, Belgium, Spain... All have a Chinese name. Sanlitun is their temporary hometown, an exotic place, a mixed world-island, and also a place they are ready to leave anytime.
Sanlitun is a place without "tombstones." No one wants to spend their remaining life or die here. But sometimes death feels so close. A few Germans got beaten and thrown into the underground parking lot of 3.3 Plaza due to common drunken quarrels. Luckily, they managed to call the German embassy while unconscious. Two Americans, also involved in a common drunken quarrel, were surrounded by a group of black youths. They prepared to end their chaotic lives in Sanlitun, suddenly saved by a black grandma descending like a tribal chief in a matriarchal society, stopping the tragedy with authoritative tone. She raised her hands: "My children, have love..."
The stories here never appear in tour guides, travel information, or police case records, but they happen every day. These stories embody the following virtues: intoxication, unrestrained indulgence, acting on impulse, promoting rebellion, expressing oneself fully, and enjoying precarious happiness. This is the virtue of Sanlitun, which is especially beautiful yet cruel. Lucky or unlucky, it is fleeting.
Box: Sanlitun Consumption Index
8:2 vs 2:8: The proportion of foreign and domestic guests at bar Mesh. The ratio has always been 8:2, but since Manager Cobain took over, he aims to reverse the ratio to 2:8, as foreign guests are too transient, and familiar customers cultivated over three months all leave after three months.
20 seconds: Barkeeper Jimmy at Mesh can make a Mojito cocktail in 20 seconds. On average, he serves a customer in four minutes.
90 seconds: In the colibir cupcake eating contest, a boy won by eating six cupcakes in 90 seconds. His reward is a free cupcake every day for a year.
20 minutes: Bar Punk has two large trash bins that fill up every 20 minutes, from 11 pm to 2 am.
2 hours: The average time it takes for cupcake store Colibri to make one cake.
14 hours: Lexie (Mu Yasi), founder of Lollipop Bakery Cupcake, works on average 14 hours a day. She is 26 years old, from London, and graduated from Cambridge University. Her cupcake brand has no physical store but supplies cakes to four cafes: Crepanini, Zest, Fish Eye Coffee, and Moment Coffee.
20: Bar Punk has lost 20 ashtrays designed by Japanese designer Kengo Kuma. Made of glass, diamond-shaped, weighing about one kilogram, one customer was found hiding an ashtray in her underwear at dawn in winter.
20 kg: Bar Punk prepares about 20 kilograms of yellow lemons every night for cocktails, which requires one hour of manual juicing.
40 people: Nail Salon No. 42 can serve 40 customers on average per day. The shop is 12 square meters, with six employees, 300 bottles of nail polish, and countless nail art patterns.
200 cups: Fish Eye Coffee sells 200 drinks daily, with 150-180 cups being coffee.
1735 RMB: Each iron triangle at bar Punk costs 1735 RMB. Four iron triangles form a small bar, and 67 iron triangles form the long bar.
Ribera del duero: The best-selling wine at Spanish restaurant Agua, priced at 1028 RMB per bottle, with sales exceeding 100 bottles per month.
Black Sesame/Flower Tea Cupcakes