![]() Meant missing history, our chance to say au revoir, adieu.Īnyway, we found friends bit of eye candy, some wit. Living gets shorter, youth never younger, and to quit Good times made worse, that’s what we signed up for. His poem elegantly captures the spirit of a place and a time that is long gone.įor those who are confused, “dirty” describes the spirit:ĭepravity downed with cheap liquor, virtue unused.Īlley stained with slobber, cheats, sin, chunder - that’s vomit The photo inspired the following poem by our managing editor, Anthony Tao, a current and longtime resident of Beijing. It was posted by the must-follow Twitter account China in Pictures, which is run by Beijing resident and photo collector Tóng Bīngxuě 仝冰雪. The street is the subject of the photo above. To its south is Sanlitun Village, a multi-storied shopping complex where one can find the flagship stores of Adidas and Apple to its north are luxury malls and hotels. Remnants of its roughshod past are long gone - perhaps only surviving in the memories of those who experienced this neighborhood in all its rugged, bohemian, dirty glory. It all came to an end in 2017, when the city decided to clean it up after “ numerous violations.” Evictions and demolishment followed, and this lane is now lined with high-end retail shops. It was never respectable, but it was always interesting. Violent crime was extremely rare, and the street was probably safer from pickpockets than the average European capital. It was organized chaos, but somehow it worked. There was a police station on the corner, but the law had a very light touch, and never even used to bother the foreign drug dealers who would openly sell hashish. Ferraris competed for space in the lane with bicycles, pedestrians, and street vendors. New bars, restaurants, nightclubs, tattoo parlors, hairdressers, youth hostels, and shops sprang up in the lane just west of the main drag. Soon, there was no street frontage on the main Sanlitun Road. As the area became famous in the Chinese capital and across the country, it began to draw revelers seven days a week, 24 hours a day. In the 1990s, as China’s reform and embrace of the global market economy accelerated, bars and restaurants offering foreign food opened up, forming the capital’s first “bar street” and one of its earliest centers of nightlife. Sanlitun Road runs north-south through one of Beijing’s embassy districts. ![]()
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