Ghost malls

There's a whole string of big new shopping malls that have opened around Beijing this year.

Some of them didn't quite manage to open before the Olympics.... but there was hardly an Olympic 'boom' anyway. In fact, overseas tourism in the capital was well down that month (even the official figures admit that it was down by a few percentage points - and I'm sure they're counting all the tens of thousands of people who came as part of the Olympic circus; regular tourists who'd just come to watch the Games were rare as hen's teeth [in fact, I only met one!]). And I think it was always obvious that there was going to be some tailing off in the size of the expat community here around the Olympics, since so many people were here on specifically Olympics-related jobs. And now, of course, the 'global meltdown' is accelerating that exodus. And, even if the affluent laowai aren't all leaving, they're probably going to be a lot more careful about their spending for a while.

Now, I'm sure the property developers behind these projects will claim that they are not relying on the laowai trade alone. Wild optimism! There just aren't that many Chinese who have any money to spend on high-end foreign brands. And even those who do are starting to feel the economic pinch, just like everybody else. These are not auspicious times in which to be opening upmarket malls like these.

The big new complex in Sanlitun, The Village, made a huge push to open before the Olympics (managing it with days to spare; although much of the space is still being finished and/or remains unlet 4 months on) and has been very heavily promoted, but..... well, every time I've been through there (usually late afternoon or early evening on a Friday or a Saturday; times when you'd expect it to be fairly jumping), it has been almost deserted. Heck, there aren't even that many people wandering through - which is really surprising, given that it provides such a convenient shortcut between Gongti Beilu and the Tongli bar enclave immediately to the north of it. And I don't think I've ever seen a single customer in any of the stores (with the exception of the Apple store, of course, which hordes of young Chinese use as a free Internet café).

It's much the same story in the big new mall over at Xizhimen subway station, which I've visited a number of times recently. Numbers of people milling around are slightly higher than at The Village, but I think they're mostly - like me - taking a shortcut to the subway, or just sheltering from the winter wind; nobody actually appears to be buying anything. Solana, the huge new piazza-style mall over by Chaoyang Park, looks to be faring even worse. I went over there during the October National Holiday (which ordinarily sees a big surge in Chinese shopping) and the number of other shoppers I saw in a couple of hours barely made it into double figures. When I went into the New Balance store to buy a new pair of running shoes, I had to go into the back room to locate the only member of staff - who was fast asleep, and evidently bored out of her mind by her non-job. All the other sales staff I saw that day seemed similarly weathered by ennui.

Yes, it's all rather like George Romero's Dawn of the Dead.

Why do I care about the dire straits of developers and retailers who embark on these foolhardy ventures?

Well, I don't, not per se. Of course, I abhor the ugliness and pointlessness of these malls. I resent the months or years of construction work they inflicted on us. And I regret the loss of the neighbourhoods - and the bars - that were bulldozed to make way for them. So I do feel an unashamed thrill of schadenfreude at the possibility of their catastrophic failure.

But what really concerns me most is that they are home to a crop of large, expensive, foreigner-targeted bars and restaurants that are threatening to take this city's nightlife scene more in the direction of Shanghai's.

There is already a place for people who would prefer to be in Shanghai but got stuck with the Beijing posting - it is called Shunyi (a remote 'suburb' devoted to upscale villa developments, gated communities for foreign executives with families [and a few super-wealthy Chinese], that is increasingly coming to resemble an American small town; I absolutely loathe the place). We must do all we can to resist the unnecessary Shanghai-ification of Beijing proper. We really do not need the likes of Blue Frog, Element Fresh, All-Star and Drei Kronen in the centre of the city. Every time one of these places folds, I shall be dancing a little jig of celebration!

"Oh, thank you, Global Meltdown, thank you! Let's keep Beijing's drinking scene grotty and cheap and unpretentious - please."