Where is everyone?

A new gigantic mall has opened up across from Lucky Street (Haoyun Lu), and it is actually really nice looking. However, only a few shops have opened so far, and there were a maximum of about 5 people there. The Olympics are only 2 days away, and I have yet to see the half a million tourists that are supposed to be here.

There are stories of all the empty rooms in all the newly built hotels here in Beijing. I was lucky to get a $40 a night bargain in a really clean and modern business hotel, just behind the opulent Kempinski Hotel. Granted, my hotel room had no windows and I never knew if it was night or day (which is especially confusing when you have jet lag), but I was rather surprised.

Finally, a friend of mine here in Beijing, LEE, wrote about the lack of tourists in the popular Sanlitun bar district.

Makin’ Bank

Last night I had an interesting conversation with the owner of a popular establishment down in the Sanlitun area, the bar streets where people go to party. For obvious reasons I will not identify this establishment, whether the proprietor was male or female, nor whether the place was a bar or restaurant.

The proprietor informed us that they (to use the generic asexual form of “he” or “she") had been visited by representatives of the Chaoyang police department. They were told, explicitly, that if any foreign reporter asks how business is going they are to state unequivocally that “business has never been better.” The fact is that because of the draconian security restrictions that have been in place for the past few months business has never been worse. This particular person said that their establishment was making about 20% of their usual daily take on the weekends. That’s right, a week before the Olympics and they’re operating at 80% less intake than normal. Hotels are reporting that the usual summer tourist season has resulted in their operating with less than 50% of their usual occupancy.

The proprietor did, however, confirm the untruth of one particularly nasty rumor, one I blogged on previously.

“Uniformed Public Security Bureau officers came into the bar recently and told me not to serve black people or Mongolians,” said the co-owner of a western-style bar, who asked not to be named.

The local authorities have been cracking down on blacks and Mongolians in an attempt to stamp out drug dealing and prostitution ahead of the Games, the proprietors said.

We were informed that the police did inform the proprietor to be on the lookout for black men and Mongolian women since, and this is an unfortunate fact, drug dealers here are almost always black men, and young, sexily-dressed Mongolian girls are most likely prostitutes. So there was no explicit order not to serve them, just to keep an eye on them if they happened to show up.

Just a little insider info on the no-fun Olympics.