A Woodworking Studio, a Cultural-Creative Park, and Two Art-World Operators in One Winter

Even though the China National Art Museum, the National Library, and other major institutions stored collections here, the park was not spared demolition.

Wen Bin sealed every studio in the park himself. "If I seal them, people can still get in — it has no real legal force. If they seal them it's more trouble: breaking a seal means ten to fifteen days' detention."

He left a back door for coming and going — mostly going. On the evening of November 20, the Airport Sub-district Office of Shunyi District posted a notice at the gate of Anhua No. 1 Cultural and Creative Park, ordering the whole park to finish relocating and demolishing by midnight on the 23rd. That gave the artists inside three days to find new space and move everything out.

Wen Bin's park had been running formally for almost two years and was just hitting its stride. It sits at the intersection of Jingmi Road and Jingshen Road in Tianzhu Town, Shunyi District, Beijing — only 1.5 kilometers from Capital International Airport. The park covers about 43,000 square meters and splits into two parts. The main warehouse area is built on land the company owns and holds storage for large cultural institutions including the China National Art Museum, Dadu Art Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the National Library. The cultural-creative zone sits entirely on leased land and contains three training schools, more than a dozen artists' studios, and two galleries.

But it had one serious problem: the project had been filed as a logistics company, not a cultural-creative park.

Wen Bin started out in international trade. In September 2000 he registered Shengshi Tong Logistics, and in that company's name he bought land, leased land, and built warehouses. Between 2005 and 2014, Shengshi Tong partnered first with the National Museum of China and then with the National Library, and those collaborations gave Wen Bin the idea of converting the site into a cultural-creative park. Over the past three years he had put more than 20 million yuan toward it. But beyond cosmetic changes and a new name at the business-registration bureau, turning "Shengshi Tong Logistics" into "Anhua No. 1" would also require sign-off from the construction committee, the planning bureau, the land administration bureau, and many other agencies. Sorting out land-registration records from more than a decade earlier was its own headache. So Wen Bin kept Shengshi Tong Logistics as the main legal entity and set up a separate firm — Anhua No. 1 Cultural and Creative Industry Co., Ltd. — "two nameplates, one team."

That fatal gap in the paperwork turned genuinely fatal after the big fire in Shunyi on November 10.

Chen Zhiyuan, thirty-two, runs an outfit at Anhua No. 1 called Limu Workshop — one of those now-fashionable ventures that gathers a group of people (generally the sort labeled "middle class," who appreciate the aesthetics of daily life and aspire to a quality lifestyle) to do woodworking.

Early last year, "consumption upgrade" and "lifestyle" were coming up more and more often in investment circles. Chen Zhiyuan was among those who caught the wave. After moving into Anhua No. 1 last summer, Limu Workshop took on investment and expanded into two lines of business: custom furniture and training, which account for three-quarters and one-quarter of revenue respectively.

On the custom furniture side, Chen says Limu Workshop only does "high-end villa commissions," serving clients who "could rank in the top fifty on Beijing's wealth list." A custom furniture order averages several hundred thousand yuan. For training, Limu Workshop has been an approved practical-training base for the Central Academy of Fine Arts and the China Academy of Art since last year; public courses start at 6,000 yuan per term.

Around the same time, WeChat official accounts such as "Ergeng" came knocking for features, which Chen says turned him into something of an internet celebrity in the furniture world.

Though training brings in only a quarter of revenue, that side of the business is clearly on the rise — Limu Workshop set it up at the suggestion of its investor, Zhongzhi Dongli Technology Co., Ltd. Beyond Limu Workshop, Zhongzhi Dongli's other portfolio companies include Wanxiang Xinghui and Yiqi Story Cultural Communication, both of which also run star-making training businesses.

The high-end custom business that brings in three-quarters of revenue, however, has grown harder. Starting around March and April this year, Beijing rolled out new environmental standards for furniture manufacturing, and many furniture factories responded by moving to Hebei or Tianjin. A small studio like Limu Workshop also lacked the capital to buy the equipment the new rules demand.

Limu Workshop may be the loudest splash Chen Zhiyuan has made in the nine years since he graduated. Before it, he ran a company called Yidai Beijing Exhibition and Display Training, which built installations for galleries such as Tang Contemporary Art and the Long March Space. Between 2011 and 2016 he also ran two separate businesses — a back-courtyard restaurant in the 798 Art District, and a design-goods convenience store called Xinshou Supermarket in the Heiqiao artists' village. Both lost money in the end: the first thirty or forty thousand yuan, the second one hundred sixty or seventy thousand. Chen shrugs it off: "I didn't know what I was doing. No business sense — just playing around."

At the end of 2011 Chen Zhiyuan rented a 140-square-meter space in Heiqiao artists' village for 35,000 yuan a year (0.7 yuan per square meter per day) and opened his own studio, which he named Wuyou Workshop — "to make furniture for myself," and custom pieces for friends. By 2015 the orders had piled up, so he began taking on apprentices and formally incorporated the company.

Last summer, hearing that Heiqiao village was slated for demolition, Chen rented a standalone studio unit at Anhua No. 1 in June 2016 and moved in officially on September 1. That space runs more than 600 square meters, at 1.2 yuan per square meter per day. Three or four months later he rented another 300-square-meter space nearby to house the machinery woodworking requires.

Because Anhua No. 1 was registered under the parent company Beijing Shengshi Tong Logistics, the studios inside could also be used to register companies. Chen found the pricing fair for artists — cultural parks in Beijing generally fall into four tiers. Tier one is like Heiqiao village: a sub-landlord leases collective rural land, builds on it, and rents to artists with no property management, at around 0.6 yuan per square meter per day. Tier two usually comes with a security guard and a fenced perimeter but no way to register a company — typically around 1.2 yuan per square meter per day. Tier three has property management, a defined park, and the ability to register companies — around 4 yuan per square meter per day. Tier four has everything in tier three plus good design, a good location, and brand recognition — which pushes the price to seven or eight yuan.

Chen never imagined Anhua No. 1 would run into trouble. "This place even has collections from the National Library and the China National Art Museum." And in the words of another artist at the park, Wang Shuo (a pseudonym), "It was pretty legit — property management, security, clean and safe. The owner had principles; the contracts were detailed."

After the eviction was confirmed on the evening of the 23rd, Chen and more than ten employees packed through the night. Zhou Qiang, who runs the training side of Limu Workshop, began calling students one by one to explain the refunds and the suspension of classes. Students drove over to help; chairs and tables were piled in a corner of the studio like some installation piece, and the scene carried a certain mournful grandeur. The next day the Limu Workshop official account posted an article titled "Sorry, We Weren't Spared Either." It was read nearly 10,000 times.

Days passed, and they still hadn't found a new place.

At three in the afternoon on November 29, Chen Zhiyuan and one assistant stood outside the studio, covering the machinery, tools, and odds and ends left in the open with sheets of plastic. The whole park felt hollow and deserted; the two of them were the only people in sight.

The front door was sealed; only the back door was in use. Inside, the floor was strewn with leftovers — scrap wood, empty cardboard boxes, a Wi-Fi router nobody had gotten around to taking, and seven or eight pots of golden pothos. With the power cut, the temperature had dropped to six or seven degrees below zero, and the pothos had frozen to death, their wrinkled leaves a green so dark it verged on black. The studio's dog, a mutt named Tudou (Potato), hadn't seen an outsider in days. When someone showed up that afternoon, he was visibly excited, tearing back and forth across the cluttered floor.

Chen Zhiyuan had stashed some important belongings for now in his mentor's studio at Yihaodi International Art Zone — in Hegezhuang Village, Cuigezhuang Township, about 8.6 kilometers from Anhua No. 1, approved and built in 2008 by the Chaoyang District People's Government of Beijing, and untouched by the current crackdown. The larger items stayed piled in the open yard at Anhua No. 1.

But the promotional events on the calendar still had to go on. On December 1, Chen Zhiyuan posted a promotional clip of Anhua No. 1 to his WeChat Moments: "A park this beautiful — how can they just tear it down?" On December 3, he shared a notice for an event: Modern Weekly was holding an art exhibition called "Heaven's Work Revealed" in Sanlitun, and he would give a talk there on "The Beauty of Ming-Dynasty Furniture."

At first, Wen Bin thought he could ride it out.

The frequent inspections at Anhua No. 1 started on November 14. On November 10, a warehouse on the east side of the airport had caught fire, burning through more than 10,000 square meters. Afterward, Shunyi District launched a sweeping review of logistics and warehousing businesses near the airport.

At first the inspections weren't severe — "some rooms weren't even entered; others just got a look at the power strips." On the afternoon of November 15, the secretary of the Airport Sub-district Party Committee led an inspection team, focusing mainly on the main warehouse area. When the secretary saw the warehouses at Anhua No. 1, he looked visibly shocked, and on the spot sealed three of the China National Art Museum's storage units, one belonging to the Natural History Museum, and the Dadu Art Museum's unit. The National Library's storage unit was not sealed, but the sub-district office then issued a notice — without naming a date — ordering everyone to leave as soon as possible.

On the evening of the 18th, Chen Zhiyuan was at a banquet for a woodworking exchange conference when he got a call: "All companies in the park must clear out by the 21st." Wen Bin told him not to worry. "Let me go talk to some people first — maybe once this gust of wind blows over, it'll be fine."

There was a good reason Wen Bin wasn't especially anxious at first. Just before this round of inspections in November, Anhua No. 1 had finished upgrading its fire-safety infrastructure. The buildings had originally gone up with foam panels; in May 2017 a notice came down requiring them to be replaced with rock-wool panels. Wen Bin spent more than a million yuan and finished the swap in a little over a month.

But the chain reaction set off by the Daxing fire outran his expectations. In its wake, Tianzhu Town shut more than three hundred logistics and warehousing operations within ten kilometers of Capital International Airport — including large names such as Datong, Datian, SF Express, and JD.com — totaling roughly 250,000 square meters. From the 14th to the 28th, Wen Bin counted ten fire-safety inspections in ten days, each with twenty or more inspectors.

To protect himself, on November 28 Wen Bin sealed all the studio doors with his own hands — it might, he thought, limit some of the damage.

But once a notice went up on the main gate, there was nothing to be done. "The notice on the 23rd said they'd cut off water and electricity. So I went to talk to the secretary at the Airport Sub-district Office about it. We have nine warehouse units, four of them climate-controlled — constant temperature and humidity — with a large amount of national treasures inside. Cut the water and power and it's over: irreversible damage," Wen Bin said.

The Airport Sub-district Office, on hearing this, granted only three more days — by midnight on November 26, he had to say when he would vacate. "So I forwarded the notice to each institution, and they gave their own replies. The dormitory buildings on the southeast corner — for the security guards and property staff — have already been partly demolished as ordered. By the reported floor area, every structure to be torn down runs over a thousand square meters. I don't have that kind of money."

Wen Bin's Shengshi Tong Logistics was founded on September 11, 2000. It originally focused on international trade, along with bonded warehousing for customs. In 2005, through "a very chance encounter," Shengshi Tong began partnering with the National Museum of China — a partnership that lasted six and a half years, from 2005 to 2011. The National Museum took over the entire park; "at the peak there were two platoons of armed police stationed here — the equivalent of two companies, two to three hundred people. The National Museum used this place to store things during its renovation; once the renovation was done, they pulled out."

The next partner was the National Library, from 2011 to 2014 — three and a half years. When the National Library's renovation ended, it didn't pull out everything it had stored; a portion stayed at Anhua. In 2014, the China National Art Museum, the Natural History Museum, and Dadu Art Museum also moved in one after another. Only then did Wen Bin begin thinking about turning the park into a cultural-creative zone. He even enrolled in a two-year program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts to study art appreciation. "All these clients are art-related, so you get to see a lot of great masters' work. But I didn't really understand it, and I had nothing to say to artists. Learning a bit would at least give us something to talk about."

Add it all up, and the cultural-creative park only truly came into being at the end of 2015. Wen Bin says he went and invited the artists in himself, and subsidized a good deal of the fit-out work. If the park disappears, the combined losses could reach fifteen or sixteen million yuan.

Last year, as more and more artists moved in, Wen Bin also spent 400,000 yuan to install a boiler for heat.

By December 6, the artists had all cleared out. Only a few units in the main warehouse area had not yet moved — mainly because the approval process for state institutions is complicated. An institution like the China National Art Museum, for instance, must first pick a new site, report to the Ministry of Culture, win approval, then report to the Ministry of Finance, receive the budget, and run a tender. Moving important works out of storage requires cataloguing, accounting, packaging, and armed transport. Without a full year, it is nearly impossible.

Because of the "coal-free" policy, the boiler was banned this year too, and connecting to natural gas is prohibitively expensive. "Just running the gas line in would cost 600,000 yuan. The studios ring the entire cultural zone, so the piping would have to run five or six hundred meters; switching everything over to gas would be another two or three million." At this, Wen Bin said he was somewhat relieved he hadn't gotten around to connecting the gas.

In October this year, Wen Bin built an installation in the open courtyard at the center of Anhua No. 1 — he hauled in abandoned boilers from nearby villages and stacked them together, ringed by a circle of discarded fire extinguishers. He named the work "Fading Memory."

After ten fire-safety inspections, "Fading Memory" was cleared away too.

Throughout the interview, Wen Bin kept stressing that in 2015 and 2016 the Shunyi District government had granted Anhua No. 1 two subsidies — not large, one around 500,000 yuan and one around 100,000. "It's not about how much money — it's the government recognizing what you're doing."

Because Shunyi District authorities insisted on the China National Art Museum's withdrawal, the General Office of the Ministry of Culture sent a letter to the Beijing Municipal Government on November 28, setting the relevant parties to meet on the 30th. After the morning meeting at the government offices, Wen Bin sent a WeChat message: "Didn't go well — amounted to nothing. What a wonderful art park! Will it just be wiped out like this?" He followed it with several exclamation marks.

On December 6, when we reached Wen Bin again, he said he had contacted every artist and institution in the park and was organizing a joint petition to the Beijing Municipal Government, the Shunyi District Government, and the Ministry of Culture, hoping the authorities would give the matter due consideration.

Cover image and additional photos courtesy of Anhua No. 1 and Limu Workshop