Take it as a fun place for half day shopping, or maybe just a visit to a museum, but not as a serious real antique shopping place, especially when you were told that the stuff you are staring at is from Song or Tang Dynasty…and if you really want to buy it, they will have a story on it, the only thing you can rely on is your own sharp eyes.

The market sells almost anything you can imagine, from the big vase to menus of old cameras, or personal letters, even old private diary, it could be roughly categoried into: porcelain, jade or gem, furnitures, wooden carving, clock (watch), stamps, coins, painting(mostly Chinese paintings), second hand books, newspaper and magezines, old photos (sometime you can find old family album), collections from the Cultural Revolution (Mao’s red books, notebooks, posters, bags)… all of the above could be: seemingly very old or authentic stuff, replica, or just today’s handicraft work. The price may vary a lot from just 10 to several hundres or thousands yuan.

Photos from the market:

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Qianmen (Front Gate) Street named after the Zhengyangmen Gate (正阳门), alias of which was the Front Gate by the locals, the reason was simple, it was on the axis of the city, and was the formal entrance into the inner section of the old Peking, while the Qianmen Street was in the outer section of the City. The street also functioned as a passway when the Emperor was on his visit to the Temple of Heaven.

Due to its special location, it soon came to be a combination of every thing from the Ming Dynasty, little inns for the royal examinees and merchants, restaurants, in 1855 opened the first Pianyifang Roasted Duck (便宜坊), and in 1864 came the first shop of Quanjude Peking Duck (全聚德), and the famous steamed Dumpling restaurant Duyichu (都一处). Many famous Peking brands started their business around here, the famous Dashilan (大栅栏) locates just at the west side of the street in a wandering hutong alleyway, even today, it is still one of the major shopping streets for traditional Beijing stuff.

The Qianmen Street and Dashilan Street Area, was generally called as Qianmen Wai, or Ch’ien Men Wai (前门外), was a whole-sale trading market from the high-end jewellery, jade, banking, to daily stuff like fishes, coal, commissariat, pigs, even today the names of the closeby alley remind us its local history. By the way, the area was also famous for many other entertainments, opera houses, tea houses, night clubs …

In 1900, the north part of the street was destroyed in a big fire set by the Boxers.

From 1980s, some of the old shops kept and many new shops moved into the street, with more and more old buildings demolished, the street lost both its customers and most importantly original tastes gradually. In 2006, the area was in renovation, and it was almost ready done before the Olympic Games in 2008, sure, it regains attention, even now most of the buildings are still in decorations, many visitors come just for taking photos, fancy shops like H&M, Zara are already here, and more will move in.

After the renovation, the street becomes a pedestrian street, the trolley bus is the only way to go through north to south, the ticket charge is 20yuan/person, and very likely that is only the one-way ticket.

Two comparison photos taken in Sep. 2006, and in Sep. 2009, roughly at the same spot.

Most of the buildings are renovated according to their historic records in the 1920s to 1930s, but as most of them came together in a “natural process”, to rebuild them overnight again, not surprisingly some of the details of the buildings are just handled in a much easy way.

A panaromatic view of the street.

A view from north looking to south.

A view to the north, the end building is the Arrow Tower of the Zhengyangmen Gate.

There are many Beijing elements to decorate the street, from the bench, trash bin to the design of the street lamp (in shape like a bird cage).

At the left side, the archway leads into the Quanjude Roast Duck restaurant (全聚德).

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The name Xidan (literally, “West Single”) came from the paifang that existed on one of the streets there.In this context, the name “Xidan” refers to the single (单) paifang that existed on the west side (西) of the city.

The paifang was recently rebuilt, and now stands at the Xidan Culture Square.

History

Xidan began to develop in the Ming Dynasty as an area alongside the passage for traders from Southwestern China to enter Beijing. Restaurants and shops were eventually built for these merchants. Eventually, as the Western part of the city became the residential area for officials, Xidan became a commercial area. The location of several government agencies when Beijing was under the administration of the Republic of China also helped Xidan’s economic growth.

The area began to experience massive growth in the 1950s, as the population of Beijing began to move westwards. By the 1970s, Xidan, along with Qianmen and Wangfujing, became the three major commercial areas in Beijing.

Shops

Today this area is oriented to different consumer groups, providing mid- and high-quality commodities and compared with the Wangfujing’s fancy shops and Qianmen’s local shops, Xidan is reasonable place to shop, and compared with Xiushui Market, the vendors here are more patient and friendly.

To look for something in brands, you can try at: Joy City (大悦城), Grand Pacific (君太), Zhongyou (中友).

On the other hand, if you like something cheap, you can try at: Huawei (华威), Xinyidai Young World (新一代), Mingzhu (明珠), Minzhu Dashijie (民族大世界) or Xidan Cultural Square (西单文化广场) underground. But let me remind you, that it is always very noisy and crowdy.

The Xidan Shopping Center (西单商场), in the very north of the area, was the oldest in the aera, it is a bit tranditional department store, still in operation, but is not the center any more.

In the middle of this area, Minzhu Da Shijie (民族大世界) locates in a cluster of old style buildings. It was old mansion of a Prince (吴应熊), the son of Wu Sangui (吴三桂) in the beginning of Qing, according to an old book by Ji Xiaolan (纪晓岚), the mansion was haunted. In 1913, the Mongolian and Tibetan School (国立蒙藏学校) was founded here. Today it is a very busy commerical world at least in the day time… a 600 year Chinese date tree still survives here, in the jungle of the shops.

Xidan Cultural Square with a floor area of more than 35,000 square meters is the largest venue for a variety of cultural activities with a good environment in the downtown area of the capital at present, integrating recreation, entertainment and shopping. The central area of the commercial street is the recreation square. Xidan Cultural Square with underground restaurants, markets, cinema, bowling alley, swimming pool, rock-climbing club and the largest mirror palace in the country has become the largest venue for cultural entertainment along Chang’an Street.

Different from Wangfujing and Qianmen area, Xidan shopping area is not a pedestrian street, that is traffic is mixed with visitors, but a unique escalatored flyover bridge system connets most of the shops, it is very convenient and in the summer days, water fog was sprayed into the air to cool down the temperature.

Traffic

There are 27 buses stop at Xidan, and the most convenient way seems to be the Subway of Line 1 (after Oct. of 2009, line 4 will pass by as well), there are 3 Subway exits close by, with one of them goes into the underground shopping mall of Xidan Cultural Square, one more . Recently a street musician girl called “Xidan Girl” was famous for playing guitar at the subway entrance here.

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