California Comes to Beijing

And speaking of living in Beijing (my story about how great it is here), it can’t hurt to repeat just how gobsmacking the changes in the city continue to be, particularly for those of us who saw the place in the 90s. The video below is taken at a new shopping center on the north west corner of Chaoyang Park, Beijing’s largest. It is truly amazingly un-Beijing (or Hong Kong or downtown Shanghai for that matter), a low rise development that sprawls out extavagantly over many acres of some of the city’s primest real estate. It really is much more like California than China, and not just because of the Mission/Adobe-style design. Except that, as you’ll see at the end of the video, some things (blatant brand rip offs in this case) don’t change. For every Nike shop (and there must be four at least) there’s an Erke next door, mutated swoosh, strangely familiar sounding slogan and all.