How Beijing's Trendiest Street Became What It Is Today

Old-city renewal is a perennial topic. Yangmeizhu Xiejie avoided the wrong turns taken by Qianmen Street and Nanluoguxiang mainly because no one was in a hurry to tear everything down.

Running from Meishi Street in the east to Yanshou Street in the west, Yangmeizhu Xiejie is just 496 meters long, yet it stands out a little among the many hutongs of Dashilar.

Compared with bustling Dashilar West Street next door, Yangmeizhu Xiejie is far quieter. It has the liveliness of its longtime residents and the charm of an old hutong. Over the past few years, a steady trickle of design and creative shops and design studios has moved in, slowly changing the life of the lane. Unlike Qianmen Street, which was given a sweeping commercial overhaul, the change here has come by filling in the gaps, working alongside the original residents to revive and renew an environment that had fallen behind.

From the building of the city wall in the 32nd year of the Jiajing reign (1553) until the 1930s, Dashilar was a byword for a thriving commercial center, home to bookshops, guild halls and stores. The residence the Qianlong Emperor granted to Liang Shizheng, then Minister of Revenue and Grand Secretary of the Eastern Pavilion, stood on this street. In the late Qing and early Republican years, Qingyunge, Beijing's upscale shopping and entertainment complex, was here too. Later, the hutong, home to seven publishers and bookshops including World Book Company, Zhengzhong Book Company and Guanghua Book Company, became the capital's most important street for publishing and the book trade.

But today the hutongs are steadily being eaten away and their character keeps decaying. When more and more people who know nothing of the place read the three characters out flatly and stiffly, as "Da-zha-lan," we realize that the Dashilar (DASHILAR) that once drew Beijing's officials and nobles, its ordinary townspeople and its scholars has truly disappeared.

Two years ago, Yangmeizhu Xiejie became the first lane in the Dashilar area to begin relocating residents and renovating. Of its 1,700 households, 529 moved out; the remaining 1,171 are scattered across crowded shared courtyards. Xicheng District began trying to gather the scattered remaining households into single courtyards, freeing up the vacated ones. Part of this space goes to public toilets, neighborhood vegetable markets and the like; the rest is set aside for creative industries. Leading the renewal plan is Beijing Dashilar Investment Co., Ltd., which belongs to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Beijing's Xicheng District. The Dashilar Cross-Border Center it set up exists to bring together people from different fields to explore a model of organic renewal for the Dashilar historic district.

In these relocate-and-renovate projects, what matters most is the renovating, not just the relocating. Last year we covered a range of proposals by Chinese and foreign architects for renovating the eastern part of the Qianmen area. Among them, the "Void/Particles" proposal by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma took an approach akin to traditional Chinese medicine: rather than destroy the existing urban fabric, it looks for empty plots and corners in the hutongs and implants small spaces there to serve the needs of different communities.

And if you care to open the website of the "Dashilar Renewal Plan," it may give those who have never been to Dashilar an urge to come and see for themselves.

Renovating an old city, you soon find that historic buildings and the quality of life in hutong neighborhoods are under threat, while modern infrastructure and usable public space are lacking. Simple rebuilding cannot solve these public problems. The wholesale demolition and reconstruction of Qianmen Street is a typical case: it destroyed the district's original fabric and left behind a street entrance that only looks lively. Another case is Nanluoguxiang, where the whole street is packed with near-identical shops, so out-of-town tourists come, look, and walk past without going in. The "Dashilar Renewal Plan," launched in 2011, tries to use design to keep this from happening again.

In 2013, the Dashilar Cross-Border Center and Beijing Design Week launched a pilot program called "Dashilar Pilots." It is both a long-term project of the "Dashilar Renewal Plan" and an important part of Beijing Design Week's "Dashilar New Streetscape" design tour. Architects, designers and artists came here and chose to work alongside local residents to bring the community back to life.

During Beijing Design Week last year, we reported on the "Hutong Inner Box Courtyard" project by the Beijing design team People's Architecture Office. It essentially fits a prefabricated modular system inside an old courtyard house, preserving the original structure intact while giving residents the energy-efficient home that modern city life demands.

At first, however the designers explained the project's logic, the neighbors were sure no good would come of it. As Liang Ying, a staff member at the Dashilar Cross-Border Center, put it, "Until residents here see results, nothing you tell them makes any difference. They just think we're trying to con them." But once they watched the Inner Box Courtyard go from design to completion, an elderly woman living next door, having seen and touched the real thing, turned around and began talking with the designers about renovating her own home.

On the day I visited the Dashilar Cross-Border Center, I happened upon the People's Architecture Office team holding a meeting inside the Inner Box Courtyard they had built at 72 Yangmeizhu Xiejie. Since its completion, not only residents of the surrounding lanes but also many foreigners and people from the design world have come to see it.

According to staff of the "Dashilar Renewal Plan," the pilot house in the courtyard at No. 72 is also slated to become a guesthouse for tourists.

Running a guesthouse in a hutong is a good idea.

Cao Pu, guitarist of the band Houhai Big Shark, is also an architect. He first heard of Yangmeizhu Xiejie through Beijing Design Week and made up his mind to join the "Dashilar Pilots" project.

Cao Pu set out to build a guesthouse called "Modest Hostel." He first chose a vacated shared courtyard on Yangmeizhu Xiejie. To get along with the neighbors, he designed a set of sliding facades fitted with a bed, a writing desk and a door, which change the ratio of indoor to outdoor space. When no one is staying, the facade can be pushed inward, giving some space back to the courtyard as a shared place to relax.

But Cao Pu, a long-haired "rocker," was still driven out by the residents. They had no wish to hear him explain his design ideas; all they felt was that someone had come to take their space.

Cao Pu recorded these "amusing incidents" as comics, then chose a new site at 9 Tan'er Hutong, next to Yangmeizhu Xiejie. An elderly woman lives in this courtyard. Having learned his lesson, Cao Pu now comes to agree a time with her before every stretch of work, and starts only once she says yes. This is the culture of the shared courtyard: you cannot go it alone, and everything has to be talked through.

Zhang Ke is the founder of the architecture studio Standard Architecture. His "Micro Hutong" project at 53 Yangmeizhu Xiejie was exhibited during Beijing Design Week last year: five small wooden houses, linked yet independent, fitted into 30 square meters around a central patio. The aim was to explore whether ultra-small social housing for several occupants could be created within the cramped space of a traditional hutong. At Courtyard No. 8 on Cha'er Hutong, north of Yangmeizhu Xiejie, Zhang Ke's team implanted a micro art museum and library to create "Micro Yuan'er," another form of organic renewal for the hutongs and courtyard houses of old Beijing.

(Micro Yuan'er)

Yangmeizhu Xiejie today is still reserved by nature. It is not like Nanluoguxiang or Yandai Xiejie a few years ago, where droves of souvenir stalls and lookalike creative shops sprang up almost overnight. A neat, orderly path of blue-gray bricks has replaced the shabby dirt road that once turned to mud, and independent shops sit scattered among the old houses on both sides of the lane, neither noisy nor showy. Unless you look closely, you can hardly smell commerce at all.

Ubi Gallery was the first creative shop to move into Yangmeizhu Xiejie. Its owner came to China as cultural attaché at the Dutch embassy; when her five-year term ended, she stayed in Beijing and chose Yangmeizhu Xiejie for this space that exhibits and sells contemporary art. She deliberately avoided creative hot spots such as Sanlitun and Dongsi. "There aren't many shops of the same kind here, so Ubi's character won't be diluted by other businesses, and the hutong's character blends with Ubi's, which gives some of Ubi's exhibitions more personality."

Yet since 2012, the creative industry on Yangmeizhu Xiejie has grown slowly. According to staff, Yangmeizhu Xiejie is a key project of the "Dashilar Renewal Plan," its "showcase." "Every business brought in here has to be carefully selected, and must submit a fairly complete operating plan before moving in."

Then there are the street's own limits. "Lots of people are interested in this place, but the hutong actually has only so much to offer. The buildings are small and in poor condition, and anyone who moves in then has to renovate on their own. So businesses on Yangmeizhu Xiejie always have to be chosen slowly."

All kinds of creative shops and studios are sizing up Yangmeizhu Xiejie, and the lane, too, seems to be quietly choosing its occupants.

Most of the first shops to settle here found a comfortable way to fit into the lane's old houses. As if by unspoken agreement, they kept the buildings' original structures and, while respecting the old architecture, created an aura of their own. Soloist Coffee, a specialty coffee shop at No. 39 facing Qingyunge, for example, kept the original structure of its two-story building, and the mottled walls lend the shop a fitting industrial feel.

Book designer Jiang Xun, on his first visit to Yangmeizhu Xiejie, fell for a blue-gray building that had been a newspaper office in the Republican era and was also the original site of World Book Company. It has a front hall and back rooms, plus an inner courtyard connected to the second floor. Jiang Xun opened his "Model Bookstore" here. To find a home so well suited to his collection of woodblock-printed antique books, he even set aside, for now, the question of whether the shop would make money.

The menswear label Bifu chose Zhujia Hutong, on the south side of Yangmeizhu Xiejie. The shop combines a custom-tailoring studio with a coffee bar, in a two-story building with a courtyard that was a brothel in the late Qing and early Republican years. Its owner, Chen Xing, once studied architecture at Tsinghua University. Though he has since switched to fashion design, he went to great lengths renovating his shop, preserving as much of the building's history as he could. After the work was done, even former residents of the house often came back, and were moved to see it so completely preserved.

Quite a few new shops have opened, and some have moved here after hearing about the street.

Last year Suzuki Shokudo, which already had restaurants on Maoer Hutong, Xiaojuer Hutong and in Beixinqiao, opened its fourth branch in a courtyard house on Yangmeizhu Xiejie, along with Suzuki Shop, which sells objects the owner has collected from all over. Yao, the Triple-Major experimental retail space that was a big draw on Baochao Hutong, moved here early this year. UPlant-house, a plant shop formerly on Qianliang Hutong, also moved to 128 Yangmeizhu Xiejie this year. Each has its own style and positioning, and together they have done much to broaden the street's mix of businesses.

Local culture has survived on Yangmeizhu Xiejie relatively intact, and this has drawn in many international influences that are coming together into a more diverse culture.

One example is the local handicraft scene that the Dashilar Cross-Border Center is nurturing. Some of the craftspeople here were born here or have lived here for decades, devoting themselves to mastering a single craft.

Staff at the Dashilar Cross-Border Center introduced us to an old master who makes palace lanterns. In the words of one staff member, "Give him iron wire and he can make all sorts of things." The master has taken on many apprentices and works with foreign designers, adding modern touches to create new-style palace lanterns and hand-woven bowl covers.

The Dashilar Cross-Border Center has also teamed up with the Central Academy of Fine Arts on an education project. It helps the master craftsmen here use modern art-education ideas taught at the academy to promote their crafts, even designing visual identities and building brands for them, and may later take on marketing and management as well.

Yao, opened by Hong Kong native Ritchie Chen, a book-design shop opened by a young person from Taiwan, and Ubi Gallery, whose founder, as mentioned, comes from the Netherlands, have all brought something fresh to the street.

But whether it is the architectural experiments or the arrival of creative businesses, Dashilar's residents do not really understand what the "Dashilar Renewal Plan" is doing. What touches their lives most directly are the community-building projects.

Last year, the Dashilar Cross-Border Center and the Dashilar Subdistrict Office joined with "Lais" to launch the "Twelve Rooms Public-Interest Design" project, which renovates the interiors of homes on Yangmeizhu Xiejie and is expected to be finished in April this year. Staff told QDaily, "We chose 12 families, some of them poor, some with only women and children left, and some of master craftsmen with handicraft skills, and we're helping them improve their living conditions."

Dealing with residents is also the thorniest problem the Dashilar Cross-Border Center has faced. To Dashilar's original residents, the staff represent the government, so the residents naturally resist and reject them.

Working with Beijing universities is one solution. "We've always worked with Tsinghua. The people helping us with community building are from Tsinghua's sociology department. Their students live here and deal with residents directly, which makes things easier."

The Dashilar Cross-Border Center's office is in Courtyard No. 72 on Yangmeizhu Xiejie. Its staff, all women, spend their days going up and down the lane, getting to know every business and every household that has moved in, and following every project the designers start here. They often hear the same doubt: you've been at it this long, and I don't see any big change?

But only those who have truly taken part in the plan understand that it is precisely this gentle, small-scale, piece-by-piece model of organic renewal that keeps the old Beijing hutong atmosphere from being diluted and preserves the old communal way of life.

Even as artsy, fresh-faced creative shops keep popping up here, you can still buy a date-paste bun for 1.5 yuan on Yanshou Street at the end of the lane, an old-style snack the Dashilar Cross-Border Center staff treat as their "afternoon tea."

Images courtesy of dailyvitamin, thatsmags, Standard Architecture and People's Architecture Office