Signs Not Good for Continued Existence of Nanluogu Xiang as We Know It
Several well-placed sources on popular shopping street Nanluogu Xiang indicate the alley as we know it will be undergoing a four-month reconstruction project beginning October 8 – to perhaps be reborn with far fewer of its ubiquitous streetside shops.
The alley – which in the past decade and a half has grown from a sleepy hutong with a smattering of quiet coffee shops and retail establishments to one of the hottest tourist attractions in town – seems to be suffering the same fate as Guijie: a recent visit there revealed a proliferation of security guards with batons positioned at cross streets down the length of the street, perhaps in preparation for the renovation, which may also take a good chunk of the current tenants with it.
Sources from the street's vendor community say they've heard that the area will start repaving beginning October 8. How long the repaving will take – and whether it will also result in any changes to its streetside retail environment – remains to be seen.
Some fear the street may be closed entirely for the duration, while others remain optimistic that streetside retail and F&B will be able to remain open, with construction happening at night or with renovations happening in sections along the alley.
Regardless, the construction project is likely, at least in the short term, to put a damper on the foot traffic the alley's vendors depend on.
Like Sanlitun and 798, Nanluogu Xiang is now no longer merely a local phenomenon, but a national landmark that attracts tourists from around China and even abroad. Its status as a must-see in all the major guidebooks has resulted in dense masses of plodding crowds, so much so that this spring tourist groups were banned from the alley and all motorized traffic was cut off from 9am to 10pm daily.
Some alleys branching off Nanluogu Xiang are already under repair. Much of Heizhima Hutong's east end was recently covered with metal barriers draped in tarp painted with a fake brick design, as if to help those blockades better blend in.
A peek behind one of the barriers revealed a now vacant coffee shop, its front door still plastered with a sign reading "cafe terrace."
Several Nanluogu Xiang proprietors we talked to said that its likely the repaving will be a precursor to more rigorously enforced licensing on the alley, where anywhere from a quarter to 75 percent operate in a legal gray area.
Of course, some might say a reduction of the dense vendors on the alley would be a good thing; maybe a redevelopment will drive out the crummier businesses that are operating illegally, reduce crowds, and make room for things like better public restroom facilities.
However, it could also drive the very character of the street into oblivion. Centrally-planned redevelopments in other areas of Beijing have been lamented for destroying the original character of areas and replacing them with generic, Disneyfied versions of their former selves. The razing of the Qianmen shopping street and its replacement by a street of brands easily found in every other shopping strip in Beijing (if not the world) comes to mind.
Some worry that this is an overall trend of erasing the distinct character of Beijiing's neighborhoods. Will the capital follow a path of quashing streetside neighborhood retail spaces in favor of pushing everyone into mega-malls or the distant suburbs, as they are currently doing with wholesale markets, leaving the urban core empty and uninteresting? Maybe so.
On the other hand, this could be much ado about nothing: City planners have always had a love/hate relationship with Nanluogu Xiang, and rarely does a year go by that local planners dream of re-doing the place, but to date the street has withstood much meddling and somehow soldiered on.
In 2009, about four dozen bars/cafés ago, we reported the city planned on tamping down traffic by restricting the building of new venues, to little or no effect. And in 2010 one of our correspondents lamented the alley's imminent demise as rents began skyrocketing.
While that move drove some of the first wave of shops and restaurants out, in favor of a flurry of franchised fried chicken stands and other generic vendors, others have stood the test of time – such as Salud, 69 Café, Pass By Bar, Plastered T-Shirts, and the Downtown Backpackers Hostel.
We'll keep you posted as we hear more. But just to be safe, if you want your fill of heaving crowds and hole-in-the-wall eats, go on down to the alley prior to October 8, before its current incarnation potentially disappears behind blue corrugated metal fences for who knows how long.
More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
WeChat: 13263495040
Photos: Kyle Mullin
