Xining's Cheng Dong District in the city's east end is older than the rapidly expanding western district. While the the western part of the city is home to the city's most prominent pedestrian shopping street, its bar street, its inaugural Starbucks (Which is, oddly enough, a good leading indicator of an oncoming developing blitz. If Starbucks thinks it's worth opening a branch in your town, it's pretty clear that you've reached a level of development sufficient to sustain something that is still essentially a luxury item). The Cheng Dong District, by contrast lacks such outposts of consumer culture. Instead, the area is largely defined by the Dongguan Mosque, and the strip of Islamic restaurants and ethnic minority goods stores that surround it. However, the arrival of a new shopping development, the XinQian International Mall promises to change that. Located a few short blocks south of the Dongguan Mosque, the expansive development, which totals twenty individual buildings, including several chain hotels, high rise apartment towers, an enormous supermarket, several restaurants, and retail space for luxury goods, will provide residents of the heavily-minority Cheng Dong District a consumer space that rivals the developments on the west end of town.
When finished, the development ought to look something like this:
The plan provides ample green space in a courtyard called "Nationality Culture Square" (民族文化广场), the centerpiece of which will be a brand new, golden domed, Middle Eastern style mosque.
The surrounding towers provide space for both modest and high end luxury apartments that will overlook the development.
The development is advertising itself as not just a shopping complex, but as a lifestyle center, and certainly a place that will transform the day to day experiences of the residents that live in and around the area.
At present, however, the development remains very much a work in progress. The opening of the space has been staggered, and uneven. When I arrived in Xining in early April, some of the restaurants and shops that faced out on to the street had already opened their doors. The apartment towers surrounding the complex were completed, and many had begun to house tenants. This created the strange phenomenon of having a building be complete on top, and incomplete on the bottom. The service elevators for the towers transport families carrying groceries as well as guys in hardhats trucking around carts full of wet cement. It's an odd arrangement. The management group for the development was optimistic about opening up the mall on May 1. At the time, I felt like this seemed optimistic, but the management assured me that on May 1, everything would be open. It turns out I was right. The deadline came and went, and the front entrance of the mall remained locked shut with a padlock. Despite progress made on the front side of the building, the view that looks inside on the courtyard area reveals that the place is still very much an active construction site.
Gradually sign that the mall would open began to appear. The corrugated fencing that surrounded the openings to some of the outer storefronts began to disappear. The LED screen in the front of the mall complex, now bearing the name Parkson Mall, began to advertise firm dates for the grand opening, and even began to flash the names of stores that visitors would find inside. On May 18, everything would begin to operate.
And indeed, when May 18 arrived about a week ago, the doors of the mall were at last opened, and visitors were free to roam about the still strangely empty and incomplete space.
Inside the mall, it is still strikingly obvious that operational capacity is not quite 100%. Though banners advertise that 129 stores are already open for business it feels like there's significantly less going on. Many of the storefronts are still empty. People working the info desk inform me that all retail spaces are, indeed, reserved to renters, and that, very soon, all the spaces will be filled. Many of the big draw, big brand name occupants like Starbucks, Burger King, and Nike are still nowhere to be found, their spaces yet to be completed. Others, like Zara, and Adidas have posted "coming soon" notices outside their windows, urging would be customers' patience as they put the final touches on their stores.
Elsewhere in the mall, though things remain decidedly less finished. In some places, an open storefront reveals bare concrete walls and floors, and exposed lighting wires. In other places, the debris of construction like cinderblocks and cement bags still can be found lying around. it's strange to walk around a space where the finished tile floors are being buffed right next to a gaping hole revealing a bunch of cement dust and exposed concrete.
The incompleteness of the complex is most apparent when viewed from the coutryard, which is not anywhere close to completion. The mosque at the center is still in scaffolding, its central dome yet to fully take shape, its minarets not quite at their peak height. The surrounding courtyard is still a place of wet cement, exposed beams, cranes and heavy equipment. I'm told that it will be finished by the end of 2016. The skeptic in me thinks that this is yet another optimistic prediction.
So, what's the point in profiling a place like this? It's a prime example of what urban renewal in cities like Xining look like. The XinQian Parkson Mall is an avatar for how much of China's new commercial development unfolds. In each city that I've visited, the XinQian has counterparts: Jinan's InZone and Parc 66 Plazas, Yinchuan's Wanda Plaza. Increasingly consumer life in Chinese provincial-capital level cities revolves around these massive shopping centers that offer global brands and luxury goods alongside sleek dining and cinema options. This is the face of the new Chinese city.
But it is also a prime example of way in which urban renewal alters lifestyles as well as cityscapes. The XinQian Parkson Mall sits on a former residential neighborhood that was comprised largely of small pingfang (single story) mud brick houses. A company rep described it to me as a pingmin qu (平民区), or poor neighborhood, in an interview. The residents, he told me, were predominantly poor, and predominantly Hui. The site where the mosque stands at the center of the complex is the site of the former community mosque, a building that I'm told had a 500 year history. Clearing a space for the development began in 2009. The houses were demolished. Most of the former residents were compensated in the form of housing in the new apartment towers. The developers assured me that the most important cultural relics from the mosque (which had become dilapidated), have been saved. The aspects of community life that existed before will exist again in the re-purposed space... so I'm told.
However, the construction of XinQian points to many interesting questions about how it will change the lives of those living around it. A Contemporary, Middle Eastern style mosque will replace the old one built with Chinese temple-style architecture. New contemporary apartments will replace the old low, mud-brick courtyard houses. A new, well stocked chain supermarket will likely replace other more local places of consumption for residents. These changes are neither inherently positive or negative (indeed, some people who I've met and had casual conversations with are really pleased with the change), but they are undoubtedly transformative. It's in places like this where the kinds of change to economic, social and cultural practices that potentially redefine the boundaries of identity start to occur.