For expats, the razing of South Bar Street for a residential development was the end of Old Beijing

A few blocks from Workers’ Stadium, which was commissioned by Mao Zedong in 1959 to mark the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, is a neighbourhood called Sanlitun, the city’s centre of hedonism. Sanlitun is a place of expat lore. In the late 1990s, Sanlitun South Bar Street was, other than hotel bars, the only place to go for late-night revelry. The Sanlitun establishments were intimate and dirty, and partiers spilled into the narrow streets until it was a big outdoor beer garden. A friend of mine who teaches math at an international school and who is in his sixth year in the city told me that South Bar Street was a place where people drank lukewarm bottles of Tsingtao beer by the dozen and “just got drunk.” The Facebook group Sanlitun Bar Street Alumni now has some 1,500 members.

For many expats, the razing of South Bar Street a few years ago to make way for a retail and residential development was the end of Old Beijing. What came next was the New Beijing, a city noted by virtually every foreign journalist who visited the city up until August 2008. It was a city of nightclubs, a music scene, Western restaurants, nice cars, construction, mind-blowing Olympic venues, and an array of other things you wouldn’t expect in Communist China. In New Beijing, the South Bar Street’s raucousness moved across the way to an area called Tongli Studios, home to modern nightclubs with names like China Doll and Bar Blu. There were two stores that sold an ample catalogue of pirated DVDs, a late-night burrito restaurant, and three bars called Pure Girl (Pure Girl Bar, Pure Girl 2, and Pure Girl 3), which were known as the hang-outs for African drug dealers openly peddling hash, cocaine, ecstasy, and whatever else one might want.

In the months after the Olympics, Beijing has entered another phase. It’s the New New Beijing. And as I write from a Starbucks in Sanlitun not half a mile from the old bar strip, I’m directly in the middle of it. From my chair I can see Apple, Nike, Adidas, and Quicksilver stores, at least a half dozen white people on laptops, and a poster for a movie theatre currently playing Wanted with Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. Within 200 metres of where I type, there are four restaurants selling hamburgers priced over $10, all of which opened in the last two months. The shopping complex is called the Village at Sanlitun, a sprawling, 53,000 square meter, pedestrian-friendly shopping area that sits directly between the old bar street and the new one. This is the epicentre of the New New Beijing and, frankly, it’s pretty cool.

In the months leading up to the Olympics there was a palpable fear here about what life would be like post-games. I felt it. I worried that the city would lose the excitement it had during the first 15 months I lived here. I worried friends would flee. I worried the city would feel empty.

It doesn’t. Surprisingly, Beijing has in many ways improved after the games. Restaurants and retail developments have continued to open at a breakneck pace, and foreign students, businesspeople, and travellers, many of whom were forced to leave when China tightened its visa rules, have started to trickle back. There are more events than before the games (Kanye West was in town on Saturday) and, in some ways, the city has more of a buzz now than in the tense months leading up to the games. Beijing is a city of 15 million people, and for the first time, it’s starting to feel like it.

Many elements of Old Beijing have returned as well, to the delight of many. After a pre-Olympics crack-down on nearly everything good about the city, pirated DVD vendors are again fully-stocked, foreigners can buy their visas, and nightclubs that were forced to close for the Olympics are up and running. Even the African drug dealers are back in town. (The Pure Girl sisters are still absent).

In an entirely unscientific survey of my friends in Beijing, 100% of those who replied to my email said the city has improved since the games. They were thankful that all the media types with their press credentials hanging around their necks had finally gone. The air is cleaner and the subway more efficient, a Chinese reporter writes, while a Canadian journalist is pleased to see snack vendors back on the streets. One friend lauds the new mid- and high-end clothing stores and the growing foreign influence on “style and hygiene.” “The girls are hotter,” he says.

Of course, it’s not all roses in post-Olympics Beijing. The odd-day, even-day traffic scheme expired in mid-October, so gridlock is back. Construction has resumed. The air can still be bad, but what’s new? For me, something else has started to happen in Post-Olympics Beijing. For the first time I’m truly appreciating the city for what it is, not just as the next host of the Olympic Games. I get more pleasure from day to day Beijing life: eating at neighbourhood chuan’r (kabob) stands; chatting with my landlord, an old chain-smoker called Comrade Wu; biking through the hutongs around my apartment. Sure, the traffic and air are terrible; the city is dirty and congested, too cold in the winter, too hot in the summer. But at the end of the day, Beijing is a cool place to be – Olympics or not.