LL Bean (and more) comes to Beijing

I walked into a new shopping area of Beijing, the Solana Lifestyle Shopping Center, over the weekend and my jaw just about dropped to the floor.

Anybody who thinks Beijing has yet to catch up with Shanghai or even Hong Kong should take a stroll through this mammoth place. A few years back, Beijing opened the world’s biggest mall. It was cheesy and noisy. Yawn. But this is different.

When my wife and daughter came home one day last week from the shopping center declaring, “It’s just like Miami!” I still didn’t pay much attention. Then I went, and returned for a second time today just to take photos for the blog. One visit to this center and one realizes how much money is pouring into China and how fast the middle class is developing.

Fact is, this shopping center could be in any prosperous country in Europe or North America. There’s very little in it that signals “China.” The architect is a U.S. firm.

Be patient before you go thinking this is just an ex-pat haven. Sure, there are plenty of foreigners strolling around the area. After all, more than 100,000 foreigners live in Beijing, many within a few miles of this center. An embassy district is within walking distance, and the new U.S. Embassy is going up a few blocks away. But there are also many Chinese.

The place is an open-air project covering 32 acres. It has 19 two- and three-story Mediterranean style buildings with hundreds of shops and restaurants along themed “streets.” If you live in the First World, it’s probably the kind of place within a drive of your home.

What is really striking is the premier location. The center sits on the northwest corner of Chaoyang Park, which is the largest urban park anywhere in Asia, and a good deal of it is lakefront property, with a long promenade. The world’s tallest Ferris Wheel is going up nearby. In most Asian cities, there simply isn’t a big enough piece of land at a reasonable price to have such a sprawling shopping district. That in itself raises a lot of questions. The owner, according to this article, is Beijing Blue Harbor Properties, which boasts of having the “support of many state leaders.” Interestingly, no one seems to know if the state actually has any ownership in it. Who gave this project the green light on such a valuable piece of parkland and how much green did they get in return?

In China, you can’t just walk into the property assessor’s office and check on ownership. So who knows where money landed to get this baby built.

So as I stroll in to the place, past the Stone Cold Creamery what do I discover but an LL Bean store about to open. Downstairs, beside The North Face, Adidas, Nike and Columbia Sportswear are some European brands I wasn’t familiar with.

Beijing now has plenty of glitzy shopping centers full of super high-end luxury stores, like Ferragamo, Tiffany’s, Louis Vuitton and the like.

But this place targets China’s growing middle class, the same kind of middle-class people that populate any such mall in Europe, the Middle East and North America. It makes you realize how globalized the middle class has become, no matter if its Dubai, Frankfurt, Orlando, Vancouver or Beijing.

Comments

[A B]

What? No pat down before you get into the mall? No armed guards with M-16s?

It will never feel like Tel Aviv!

[Marvin L Foushee]

This mall looks so deserted that the PLA must use it for anti-Greensboro KKK (The U.S. Justice Department) training exercises on Tuesdays.

Œ

[Bill]

Too bad they didn't make at least part of the mall more like a street in Suzhou or Yangszhou. I won't mind fake trees if the real ones won't grow indoors. A canal would be nice too.

[Kenneth]

I don't know about Shanghai or Hong Kong, but Beijing has certainly caught up with Houston. Nice suburban shopping mall in the center of the city: now there's some intelligent urban planning.

[Chris]

The L.L. Bean stuff must be cheaper over there because they don't have to ship it out of China. I was in an L.L. Bean store several months ago and everything was made in China. And it was all crap, just like everything else made in China. I'll never shop at L.L. Bean again, that's for sure.

[on the other hand]

@Chris:

I'm almost sure LL Bean will be much more expensive in China, even if they are made in China. Nike, for example, has a lot of its stuff made in China but it's so much more expensitve to buy Nike in China than in the US. It's about supply and demand, and branding, not just production and shipping costs.

@CE:

It's a new shopping mall, probably not fully functional yet. The store next to LL Bean looks still under renovationn.

[isabel maria nieto rodriguez]

necesito saber la dirección exacta del centro comercial, ya que estoy interesada en ir.