A very pleasant space in which I spent alot of time on my last trip to Beijing was the DiSanJi Bookstore–an 8 story complex that included 4 floors (at least) with the others devoted to other small retailers. There were also several upscale restaurants, a food court in the basement, and a Western-style coffeeshop with free wi-fi. It was a post-lunch study space for me.
It was sparkly and brand new when I was here in 2007, and most of the spaces were rented. It’s not aging well: there’s a ton of vacancies; the kiosks are all gone; no more coffeeshop; and the top floor of the bookstore is closed. Bad economy you might say, but I’m not sure if that explains the lack of building maintenance. This building had public toilets that supplied paper and were rather sparkly. Now, the paper holders have become places for people to rest their cigarettes, the towel dispensers are gone, and there’s more than a handful of out-of-order stalls. The food-court shows wear-and-tear as well. At the bottom of the escalator, dust-bunnies hang from the ceiling (which I imagine in 2007 would have been wiped down twice daily. With a dirty rag maybe, but wiped nonetheless). Beyond cleanliness, the frosted glass floor tiles were obviously not set correctly, as water and grime have worked themselves between the layers of glass.
What’s going on here? I can understand shrinking the store down. And I can understand some pieces of construction starting to decay because of design or execution flaws. But the cleanliness combined with the other factors confuses me a bit. I would have guessed that the overly-zealous cleaning staff would have been the last to be let go.
The history of the area was given to me only by word-of-mouth. Apparently the district used to be filled with booksellers. Once economic changes took hold, the booksellers were consolidated into 3 big retail stores, and a building of stalls (which we didn’t have time for yesterday). Several office towers were built, and the area rebranded as part of Haidian’s hi-tech business park. The condition of the bookstore makes me wonder how much office space has become available as tech firms have gone bust? The surrounding area continues to develop, with the Sinosteel tower dominating the scene and other buildings continuing to go up. If time permitted, I would have liked to have gone back through some of the other buildings to see how time is treating them. Darn this fast trip.