Qianmen Dajie

After extensive renovation Qianmen Dajie has arisen from the construction dust as a Qing Dynasty Disney with only a few laozihao shops and restaurants to keep it going. At the northern end two trams provide the first photo stop, with posing and cries of “qiezi” also culminating from outside the Quanjude further south of the Dang Dang Che. As over ninety percent of the shop fronts currently lie vacant, the street only really offers one very long photo opportunity, if you’re after some shopping turn right onto Dazhalan (Beijingers say da shi lan'r), however, card-carrying philatelists should continue down to number 84 for the China Post Philately Hall. Unfortunately, we found that the few restaurants on the strip had already been booked out for lunch by 11.30am on a Tuesday, so it’s best to eat elsewhere. Although tea and jade stores seek to be the main draw, we preferred the scattered old black and white photographs, birdcage streetlights and door stone trashcans.

Until recently, the local front in the Nike versus adidas war has been played out on the billboards lining Wangfujing and Xidan. The two global brands are also struggling to be the providers of whatever sporting apparel athletes choose, or are instructed, to wear at the Beijing Olympics. The competition between the two brands in the Chinese market heats up with the opening of adidas' flagship store at Sanlitun's village tonight. The Beijinger's Fashion and Beauty Editor Halla Mohieddeen got a chance to take a sneak peek at the store yesterday and gives us her take below. Images by Simon Lim

adidas Brand Center
Daily 10am-10pm. Bldg 11, South Area, Sanlitun Village, 19 Gongti Beilu, Chaoyang District.
朝阳区三里屯南路19号11幢

Designed to create a village within a city, the striking development in the heart of Sanlitun is slowly taking shape. The boards have come down, and we're now starting to see more of the eclectic mix of structures that will make up the shopping and entertainment district. The first store to throw open its doors is the new adidas Brand Center, adidas' global flagship store.

Boasting 3,170 sqm of floor space, this new store will be adidas’ largest worldwide. What's more, it brings together all the brand's concept lines under one roof, another first for the brand. This means that whether you want shoes, kids clothing, accessories and apparel, or lines such as Y-3 or adidas by Stella McCartney, it's now all available under one roof.

Update: (May 27, 9.30am) Soho China have just announced that they've acquired a new large-scale commercial development project in Beijing for RMB 5.5 billion. Formerly known as the Kaiheng Center (Kaiheng Dasha), the property is on the southwest corner of the Chaoyangmen intersection (south of the boat-like CNOOC building and across from the Ministry Foreign Affairs building), and surprise surprise, will be renamed Chaoyangmen SOHO.

As the walls surrounding the Village at Sanlitun project come down to reveal an ultra modern, but as yet unopened, complex, urbane editor Alex Pasternack gives us his impression of the official launch of Soho China's new Sanlitun project.

At the tail end of Beijing's Olympic transformation, amidst government building restrictions and market jitters, it is getting a bit harder to spot those amazing, surreal moments of destruction in the city proper, when the old goes quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) in the face of the new.

But a vivid moment was offered up earlier this month courtesy of Soho China, which launched its new Sanlitun project with a big, brash grand opening. Hundreds of people pressed into their showroom to get a glimpse of classy, high-end apartments, gulp wine, and watch a pop cover band play beneath a screen showing a documentary set in Cultural Revolution-era China. The most exciting and surreal moment was when wiry models in suits serenaded the glassy architectural model with a flashlight dance (see video below).

Those planning to head up to the Olympic Green this weekend to catch the 2008 China Athletics Open at the Bird's Nest, should keep their eye out for the small Beiding Niang Niang Temple that stands just a few hundred meters south of the Water Cube. The 500-year-old temple is currently fenced in and not really lit up, so it's very easy to walk past without noticing as you marvel instead at the nice lights flickering across the bubbly exterior of the Water Cube. The Temple is located just east of the southwest entrance to the Olympic Green, directly south of the Water Cube, which was moved 100m north of its originally planned position so as not to impact on the integrity of the temple.

The temple was built in the Ming Dynasty and is one of five Niang Niangtemples that surrounded the imperial capital, four located on the outskirts of the city in each of the cardinal directions and a fifth temple just south of the Imperial City itself. Each of these Niang Niang temples were devoted to worship of a Daoist goddess of fertility, who was said to be the daughter of Tai Shan, and catered to ordinary residents of the agricultural land outside the walled city.

This month's issue of urbane is adorned with a pretty neat cover image: a collage that forms a map of the Chaoyang district, with neighborhoods represented by bits of paper that have been collected from each of those areas. The design was done by one of China's many up and coming graphic designers, Guang Yu of Beijing-based MEWE design alliance, and was commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for their ongoing exhibition China Design Now.

We noticed over at Shanghaiist that Google China have teamed up with Chinese movie site M Time to unveil a new service that allows you to search for movie screening times at a good selection of cinemas in major cities across China. All you need to do is enter the Chinese name of the movie you're interested in seeing – for example, say you want go and see Jackie Chan and Jet Li's The Forbidden Kingdom (Gongfu zhiwang 功夫之王) – after you've entered 功夫之王 into the search box of the main Google China page, you'll see this screen and if you click on the first entry 功夫之王在北京市的放映时间 you'll find this page which contains all the details of screening times at 35 cinemas around Beijing. You can search for screenings on a particular day in the future and also for all movies being shown at cinemas across Beijing.

The service is only available in Chinese and replicates (admittedly with more cinemas) what Sina has been doing for quite some time. Of course, you can always find movie screening times in English every week as part of the Beijinger's regular Tuesday Film Roundup.

I haven't really been paying much attention to the Chinese Google site of late and took this chance to have a look around. The site offers some useful functions for those who can recognize Chinese characters including a handy "directions search" attached to Google Ditu and also the search options available through Google Shenghuo that includes search tabs for housing, jobs and restaurants in Beijing as well as plane tickets. New additions to the main Google.cn page include the presence of 7 colored points below the main search box. The first four are for features that I was already familiar with: Google's video, image, news and map search functions. The other three are relatively new and include a blog search function, a page devoted to "top ten" rankings that have been culled both from popular search items on Google and other sources, and a guide to useful websites.

Last week I was surprised to read a report on the official Beijing Government website saying that the Restored Qianmen Street is to be unveiled before May 1. When i took a peek through the fence surrounding the site about a month or so ago, it looked a long way from completion. However, the photos pasted below from today's Beijing News, seem to show that the street is indeed close to being finished. The article says that the street, which was originally scheduled to open to the public at the end of April is now likely to be unveiled "around" the May 1 holidays. With a tram line running down the middle and a mix of old fashioned laozihao establishments and international brands like Apple and Starbucks, the street is almost certain to become a tourist mecca.

For those of us struggling to come to grips with the no holds barred development of our beloved capital city--or who are simply fascinated by the city's twisted, hipper-than-thou architecture scene--this Saturday promises a good healthy start to the weekend: a talk by three of the city's young architects at the Boloni furniture store, sponsored by Urbane. Not that we need an occasion to talk about Beijing's development four decades into the future, but the fact that each of them has a new book out isn't a bad reason.

Ma Yansong will talk about MAD Dinner, the first monograph on his firm MAD, one of China's most innovative firms.

Dutchman Neville Mars, formerly of Rem Koolhaas's Office of Metropolitan Architecture and the mastermind behind the Dynamic City Foundation, a sort of urban think tank, will be discussing the group's oeuvre as seen in the new book The Chinese Dream.

The final bridge of the Linked Hybrid by Steven Holl Architects was raised earlier this month. Located just northeast of Dongzhimen, the residential/commercial building (also known as the Modern Moma) will be completed in 2008.

Three of Beijing's buildings eek out spots on Time magazine's roundup of the world's Ten Best architectural marvels: Herzog and de Meuron's Olympic Stadium, OMA's CCTV Headquarters, and Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid. No surprises about the nod – of course, we already know that after years of awfulness we've got the market cornered on hot architecture. But what we want to know is, where in Mies van der Rohe's name is the Water Cube? Also known as the National Aquatics Center, the building by PTW, Arup and CSCEC is not just (speaking objectively here) Beijing's most elegant swimming pool ever (not a lot of competition there admittedly), but it's been voted the favorite of the laobaixing, and of at least four architecture award juries, including the Venice Biennale. Someone needs to throw Richard Lacayo into the pool. If you want to know more about any of these projects, videos after the jump.

French architect Paul Andreau, who just recently saw the unveiling of his egg-shaped National Grand Theater here in Beijing, shares his thoughts with Alex Pasternack in this month's issue of tbjhome. The architect also reveals his reaction to the May 2004 tragedy in which a section of the roofing of a terminal he designed at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport collapsed and killed four travelers, including two Chinese nationals:

“I would say it is the worst thing that can happen to any architect in his life, and it was for me. It was a terrible shock. And I look at it with a full sense of responsibility … from the beginning I never wanted to say, ‘It’s not me.’”