Mall's Front Door Chained

Christmas Eve and it’s a visit over to Wang Jing to the ZhongFu Baihuo.  This is a place I haven’t been to in five or six years.  But a lot can change in that time.  Five or six years ago both my little girls were actually little and they were extremely interested in the pop group EXO.  This band seemed to auger something powerful with its combination of cute young Korean fellas and Chinese heartthrobs.  The songs were in both Korean and Chinese and the songs were on the Chinese radio.  And when we want to ZhongFu Baihuo, at least as far as I recall, it being in Chinese Korean section of Wang Jing, there were plenty of stalls in the mall to get posters and buttons and stickers promoting this band.  These days, the band is BTS and the home country is still South Korea.  I need merch for Christmas.  

Let's get lunch first.  The Korean bulgogoi place I remember on the fifth floor that my daughter’s Korean school mates family had recommended is still there, fortunately. Grilled beef, grilled pork shank, kimchi and oyster pan cakes just like you might have when you were in Seoul.  I didn’t hear much Korean spoken inside but the guy who showed us to the elevator was quick to code switch to Korean when we bid him adieu An yong haseyo. 

This ZhongFu mall on the first floor I was excited to reenter  Everything felt like it had five years ago until we passed the vestibule to enter the empty shell of a shopping area.  Workers were busy tearing things down and banging things together.  Going down to the basement though my younger daughter and I were both hit with the nostalgia wave from five years ago.  There are still many places to buy pencils.  You can still get a facial.  You can still get some books and some trinkets.  But there ain’t much of anything else to get.  There is no BTS merch.  I looked in vain for anything with Korean boy bands on it. 

Across the street my son pointed out to me that the sign announced that the market was the “largest Korean Market”  Well, OK.  They went to get new SIM cards and I headed over to have a look.  Crossing one crowded street and then the next I arrived to find the mall's front door chained shut.  There was no sign of life within, other than a sad looking coffee shop window on the third floor. I walked up the side of the mall and there were some shop fronts that certainly didn’t have what I was looking for.  This whole section of town then feeling run down and not especially Korean any more.  Has the center of Korean life moved on?  Are Koreans now vacating Beijing, like other foreign communities?  My daughter, reiterates what she has said before:  Japan or even the U.S. have more BTS stuff than China.  No one in this boy band even speaks Chinese and they have never toured here. 

Monday, 12/24/18