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Perspectives Walking Tour of Zhongguancun
July 26, 1999  This building is the firststop for any startup company that wants to settle in Zhongguancun, so it's not a bad place to start our tour as well. It's the Haidian District Administrative Heaquarters, which houses the Beijing government and Communist Party officials who effectively guide and control all business in the district. In the building's first-floor lobby is a computer screen loaded with Chinese-language information on Zhongguancun -- its history, how many companies are located here, what preferential policies are available, etc. Upstairs are the offices where company officials come to plead for financial support, fill out applications, and periodically return to give progress reports. Just across the street (not pictured here) is the blue glass tower of the Stone Computer Group Limited, one of the three major companies in Zhongguancun If Zhongguancun could be said to have a soul it would reside in this building, the Yi Ping Hotel. Originally a rooming house for business people, party officials and out-of-town visitors to the district's many universities, the hotel gave up two floors to startup computer companies in the middle 1980's as part of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. In those days, it was China's Silicon Valley all in one building. Through the front door will take you to the hotel's front desk, to the left, or into the fast food restaurant where you can catch a good bowl of noodles or other simple Beijing fare.
To catch a peek of the real business of Zhongguancun these days, walk through this doorway just to the left of the Yi Ping Hotel's main entrance. The dark, small lobby still gives no hint of the sights beyond. It may seem like you are trespassing, but you are not. Take the small stairway off to the left of the front desk and walk up a flight of stairs. And there you'll see it: a long hallway of tiny hotel rooms now crammed to the ceiling with computers, boxes of software, keyboards, peripherals and every other digital gadget. Three or four young people to a room are doing business on their cell phones, tinkering with software, smoking, or playing computer solitaire to pass the time. These are mostly 'to-the-trade' retailers, wholesalers and distribution points, with every room a different business, many of them started and running on only one good-sized company order. Back down the steps, turn right when you are back on Haidian Lu and walk two doors down. This is Federal Software, a respected retailer that carries a vast variety of Chinese-language word processing, office systems, educational, games and other types of software. Federal is best known in Zhongguancun not only for reliability and quality, but also because every one of its software programs is legal. It simply doesn't sell pirated goods, which makes it virtually unique in the district -- and its prices uniquely high. A half block further north on Haidian Lu from Federal Software brings you to the intersection of Haidian Lu and Zhongguancun Lu -- the heart of the district's modern retailing business. This photo shows the Ke Yuen Electronics Market, the oldest and largest of the two giant retail shops that anchor the district on the intersections northwest and southwest corners. Two stories covering half a long city block, Ke Yuen functions largely as a supplier of components to the dozens of storefront computer shops that line the streets in Zhongguancun. With major PC and laptop brands like IBM, Compaq, and Dell still a bit pricey for the average Chinese, entrepreneurial retailers buy components at Ke Yuen, assemble the machines themselves, slap on their own brand label and sell at a huge discount. While a Dell with, say, a Pentium III chip, 3.6 gigabytes of hard drive storage, 64 megabytes of RAM and a 56K modem is listed for 11,998 RMB (US$1,446) on the Dell China website, a little digging in Zhongguancun's computer shops will net you a local brand built with equivalent for around 7,000 RMB (US$845). The Zhonghai Electronic Market, just across the street from Ke Yuen, the building is newer, cleaner, and more brightly lit, but the goods are the same. Shopping in the Zhonghai Electronic Market. Note the ceiling-mounted air conditioners to keep the fresh air flowing… The entrance to Peking University, known as 'Beida,' two long blocks west of the Zhonghai and Ke Yuen markets on Haidian University. During the period of economic reform started by Deng Xiaoping in the middle 1980s, many professors from Peking University started computer and software companies as a way to make money for themselves and the university. The Peking University campus. Many of these students spend their summer breaks, and will eventually go to work full time, in the software companies run by their professors and fellow alumni in Zhongguancun.
Back on Haidian Lu. For a look at the nominally illegal but actually flourishing part of Zhong-guancun, say "Yes" just once to one of the touts who accosts you asking "Want CDs? Want CDs? Software! Games! Girls!" He or she (there are plenty of women in the game) will briskly lead you to one of many side streets like this one, packed with small storefronts, their front blinds closed, that are filled with pirated CDs. Here is where you can get the computer game Doom, the Hollywood movie Titanic, or Windows 98 for 10 RMB (US$1.20). No kidding. Be careful of viruses though. In one such storefront in this alleyway, about ten feet beyond the fellow in the white shirt, was a room filled with card tables, each one set with an opened suitcase stuffed with pirated CDs. These places are occasionally raided by the police; the suitcases made for a quick escape if needed. Over the past three years, after every raid, the pirated CD business dies down for a few weeks and quickly springs up in another alley a few blocks away.
Be careful taking pictures in these areas though. This fellow, a self-appointed protector of Zhongguancun's reputation for quality goods, put a quick stop to my investigative journalistic ways. |
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