Qianmen Street: Grand opening before Beijing Olympics

Residents have returned to their old street, only to find out that their familiar street is blocked for the grand opening of the Qianmen Street Renovation Project on August 7th, 2008, one day before the Olympic Games' opening ceremony.

Qianmen, or Heaven Gate in Chinese, located directly south to the Tian'anmen Square, and is considered the most important gate of Beijing's old city wall. The Qianmen Street is a historical royal street south of the gate, and for one time was Beijing's most prosperous shopping district. It has seen some decline in recent years, but even in its most gloomy time there were still scores of shops running business on the Street at the same locations that could date back to the 1900-1920 era. Besides the old shops, tens of thousands of Beijingers also resides by the street and call it home.

Major renovation and rebuild efforts started in 2006 in order to meet the time for the Olympics. All of the old shops and residents were forced to move out of the blocks to make way for the newly designed shopping facilities and street. The old buildings and siheyuans were completely torn down and new buildings were erected in a dazzling speed. Shops were relocated in less popular neighborhoods, and the residents' old houses and siheyuans were traded with apartments buildings, almost always located in the suburb area around Beijing. Some residents have to change their daily commute to work from 10 minutes walk to 2-3 hours bus ride.

When the renovation is near its finish, shop owners find out that it's much harder than they thought to keep the government to their words - they are promised to move their shop back to the street once it's reopen. At last only 14 shops were successfully returned - on a 800m long street. The residents are less fortunate -  their numbers of returns are: 0. 

All the other shopping spaces except the 14 are left for the big international brands. Accordingly the design of the buildings is completely new too. When asked on a press conference about why changing the traditional siheyuan structures into new shopping complexes that imitate both Chinese and Western styles, the head official to the project, Wang Shiren said: "It's a new era and people should appreciate new styles."

However, when the old residents returned to the street once more, it's impossible to study and identify any style at all -  their houses are gone, and there's a fence between them and the street.

The street will be reopen on August 7th, 2008.