In order to climb up to Chongqing's famous magic world - Redding International Block A - to enjoy the joy of the world.
In Guanyinqiao, an old shopping district with a status comparable to that of Shanghai's Nanjing East Road Pedestrian Street, the old-looking Redding International Tower A is a mysterious and unobtrusive presence. The building's four passenger elevators serve thirteen or four stores and their guests on each floor. The building is hollowed out in the center with two patios running vertically through the 48 floors, from which you can see the balconies of each household.
Redding International lives up to its name, being in Chongqing with global aspirations. In Block A, there are private kitchens under the banner of molecular cuisine, a themed cat cafe where you can change into a free kimono to jerk a cat, a beauty training institute and a tattoo parlor, a trendy Ins-style themed afternoon tea, a reservation-based massage that doesn't open easily on weekdays, a board game bar and a private theater.
Chongqing, a mountainous city with a population of more than 8 million, is never short of "wonders" to dazzle the people of the plains and hills. Chongqing is the city with the most high-rise buildings in western China, and there are 55 buildings over 200 meters tall that have been built alone - less than 20 in San Francisco, which is also a mountainous city in the United States. The houses are built on the mountain, lined up, before the emergence of the "first floor out is the top floor" scene.
Due to the small land area and high population density, Chongqing has been developing vertically since the beginning of urban planning. It's not uncommon to see all the roadside stores in the same building like Redding International. Similar to Hong Kong, Chongqing's stores of all sizes are vertically distributed in various buildings in different business districts, with one floor being a frogfish head and the other being a children's training institution and a "debt collection" signboard.
But of all the high-rise buildings in Chongqing, the mediocre Redding International is an absolute spectacle.
It's 11:30 pm. This is the time when Block A of Redding International really wakes up. One by one, people are impatiently pressing the elevator downstairs, and on the balcony of the patio and the corridor of the building, the aunts who work in the kitchen of a private kitchen are moving out of their benches and peeling beans and preparing vegetables in front of the door.
Chongqing's daily entertainment ends late and the day begins late. It is said that the concept of a night market has existed in Chongqing since the Tang Dynasty, while modern night markets such as Huangjiaoping and Keyuan Si Lu have been in existence since the early 1990s. So the men, women and children here have long been accustomed to the day and night life, after dinner, a square dance and then with the little sister about a handle burn and then go home, in the middle-aged circle of the breadwinner is not unusual.
Like the snack street and barbecue store downstairs in Guanyinqiao, Redding International doesn't see a rush of customers until late afternoon: local young people just off work and kids just out of school start to come out, and the windows in the building turn on the hanging star lights, and the sign labeled "Jitterbug Recommends" starts to light up. Security guards, who are invisible during the day, suddenly appear in the first-floor lobby, shouting at people to wait in line for the elevator.
But during the day, Redding International is just a dark and quiet commercial and residential building. If the view from the patio in Block A gives you a hint of business, then Blocks B and C, which are connected by a sky garden, look like ordinary, cheap commercial buildings.
You'll never know what's going on inside this huge urban fortress until you step inside. It's a place where young people from all walks of life can find a sense of belonging, and it's also a buffer zone for young entrepreneurs starting out in the city.
Huang Yirou, born in 1992, runs Miss Ting, a high-altitude afternoon tea store on the 43rd floor of Block A of Redding International, together with her friends, which just opened in March this year. After graduation, Huang Yirou was originally in the plastic surgery hospital as a medical beauty consultant, often have to work overtime, but the income is good.
Huang Yirou is tired of the nine-to-five office life and sometimes to work against the heart. So she resigned with a friend, to the Redding International Block A disk a high-level store. Initially she wanted to open a high-rise bed and breakfast in the same style, but the fierce competition and higher investment in bed and breakfasts still made her choose an afternoon tea store that does not require a back kitchen or a large area. And there are natural advantages to opening a high-altitude afternoon tea in Chongqing, which is densely populated with high-rise buildings. She did not recruit part-time employees, and her friend and the two take turns in the store to greet customers.
High-altitude afternoon tea is one of the hottest businesses among young girls today, especially among Little Red Book users, and the stores often feature different delicate scenes and their own high-rise views overlooking the city, so you can just come in and buy a cup of afternoon tea and stay! shoot all afternoon and keep your cell phone albums full. One of the earliest known is an afternoon tea store called Pétales in Futian Shixia, Shenzhen, where girls can take Netflix photos pretending they're staying in a five-star hotel in Hong Kong in the store's hotel king-size bed set.
"Chongqing people are generous and daring," says Huang Yingrou, "and it's not hard to quit your job and start a business. We would call it straightforward."
Chongqing's unpretentious urban temperament may be reflected in the lack of pleasantries between the owner and his customers, even in an afternoon tea store that emphasizes service and sophistication. The owner of the store may be a friend or an employee of the store owner tomorrow.
On the 40th floor of Block A of Redding International, there is a wedding experience museum "BIANCHE Aries Dream", which is the hottest wedding experience museum among young girls in Chongqing, and it is a business that combines high-altitude afternoon tea, Instagram-style photo sets with the experience of wearing a wedding dress, and the owner is a pretty girl named Zhang Xue (96), who has been in the business for years. The owner is a beautiful 96-year-old girl named Zhang Xue.
A 19-year-old guest who often comes to the store to take pictures - also from Chongqing - and Zhang Xue chatting, remembering to help Zhang Xue buy a cup of milk tea every time she visits, and also helping to greet guests. Later, during the summer vacation season, she became a permanent part-time employee at Zhang Xue's store. There is still a sense of trust and naturalness between the owners and customers here, as well as some of their peers. "You guys sit by yourselves for a while, I'm going to pour some tea," says Huang Yingru, the owner of the 43rd floor store, as two well-dressed young girls arrive, and disappears confidently into another room as she greets them in Chongqing dialect; a moment later she serves up a cake and some tea, and naturally sits down behind the counter to eat a takeaway of hot-and-sour noodles. The girls, meanwhile, sat down at the white bathtub and window view and started taking selfies.
In Redding International, and even in many retail formats in Chongqing, there is something of Chongqing's own jianghu quality in the relationship between shopkeepers and their guests: not too far away, not too close, just right, and direct and unobtrusive.
"Chongqing is a city that is very jianghu and despises the scholarly temperament. Over here you can't say you're a doctor or anything, people will think you're pretending. Even if you're cultured, you have to be grounded," said Aris, a Chongqing native.
This groundedness has made Chongqing's micro-retail business extraordinarily prosperous, and the city has been relatively friendly to new micro-entrepreneurs. Even outside the main city of 9 districts, Chongqing is a huge consumer market of 30 million people, there is a huge potential for tapping into the customer base; Chongqing is also particularly suitable for catering-related entrepreneurship: Chongqing Bureau of Statistics data show that almost every quarter of Chongqing's total retail sales growth of social consumption exceeded the national average, food and beverage retail sales revenue is the highest double-digit growth in all categories. From January to August this year, Chongqing's total retail sales of social consumption goods grew by 8.6 percent, while retail sales of food and beverage consumption grew by 13.7 percent year-on-year.
Redding International, on the other hand, is a testing ground for young people to quit their jobs and start their own businesses. "BIANCHE Aries dream" store advocate snow is also a resignation of entrepreneurship, her original occupation is real estate sales, because of the hard work they decided to do their own boss; not to mention a small bar in the building, dog curry cat curry and board game bar owners, most of whom are dreaming of entrepreneurship after 90 years.
But the reason why young entrepreneurs gather in Redding International is because the rent is cheap.
In Guanyinqiao, Chongqing's second-largest business district, the Redding International, with its average hardware facilities, is almost the cheapest building to rent. Chongqing's major local real estate developer Longhu Real Estate developed the Times Sky Street in Redding International downstairs, including a variety of boutiques from Muji to Louis Vuitton, surrounded by supporting the newer buildings are more than 5,000 yuan per month - for example, next to the Rongheng era of 50 square feet or so store monthly rent of about 7,000 yuan, the building has a more This building has a more beautiful transparent view elevator. Not to mention the street stores downstairs, which often rent for tens of thousands of dollars and are rented by chain brands with bigger budgets. But the flow of people in Guanyinqiao is quite substantial - it is not like Jiefangbei, where there are many tourists, Guanyinqiao has a high proportion of locals and a relatively stable flow of customers; it is not like Shapingba, where college students gather, but Guanyinqiao's consumer groups range from local junior high school students to office workers from other countries coming to Chongqing, which is a more diversified group.
Redding International has issued a discount ticket to those who want to take advantage of the CBD crowd to set up store. Block A of Redding International, which is dominated by large apartments, has a monthly rent of just 5,000-6,000 yuan, while a small apartment of about 40 square feet in Block C has a monthly rent of just about 2,000 yuan. Zhang Xue's bridal store is about 80 square meters, the rent is only more than 5,000 yuan a month; this is her pre-opening preparatory stage in the Guanyinqiao found the most cost-effective place.
This has brought more and more small business entrepreneurs into the crowded Hongding International Building, struggling to make a living through small signboards in dimly lit elevator stalls and online promotions such as Volkswagen Dianping.
Likewise, shy young people can find ways to spend a full day of entertainment at Redding International for less than 150 bucks. At noon, you can buy a set meal for two at a private restaurant in Redding International, which costs only 100 yuan; in the afternoon, you can buy a set meal for as low as 20 yuan, and sit for the afternoon at a cat cafe, dog cafe or an afternoon tea store where you can take photos. In the evening, Redding International is even more lively - you can join the crowds that come to spend money in the board game stores here, and young couples can also pack the private theater theme rooms for the night, at a lower price than the neighboring hotel chains.
If Shanghai's urban vitality lies in the side streets and alleys behind its shopping districts - where shoe repair stores, laundromats, and miniature boutique cafes have opened up as capillaries that form the natural growth of business behind the city's hustle and bustle - then in Chongqing, its capillaries are things like Redding International, which is a city of Fortresses, with elevators connecting the upper and lower floors. The capillaries in Chongqing are vertical buildings such as Hong Ding International, which are connected by an elevator like a fortress.
But Chongqing's urban labyrinths are not the same as the sophistication of Shanghai culture. Some people say that the inclusiveness of Sichuan and Chongqing is closely related to the Taoist culture here, which creates the character of the residents of Sichuan and Chongqing, who are not in a hurry to make quick successes and all-encompassing, and in Taoist terms, "everything is natural", which translates into Chongqing dialect as "other people want to jangling on the jangling, it's not about my hammer thing. "The first thing you need to do is to get your hands dirty.
The inclusiveness of Redding International allows different small businesses to have a place in the building, and allows the city's subculture to grow here in a low-key way.
A while ago, the Taiwanese writer Liao Xinzhong wrote "six days and five nights in Chongqing magic building Redding International fantasy travel" screen, the article said "in the Redding International, you turn a corner in the hallway, you will encounter lively and lovely magical girls; often encountered looking for the organization of the Han Chinese costume enthusiasts, bowed to each other in front of the elevator".
This is true, and the kimono theme cat bar, Chinese dress theme cat bar, etc. probably meet the needs of those consumers who theme dressing, there are more narrower circle of service stores, hidden in different floors of the small security doors, push open the door to find a different world, such as the bar called "cabinet to come", or the massage parlor called sadism SPA, as well as those who called the "cabinet to come", and the massage parlor called "sadism SPA", as well as those who called the "cabinet to come", and the massage parlor called "sadism SPA". The first is the "Lucky Charms", a massage parlor called "SPA", as well as those small businesses that don't even have a name in the Dianping.
For the first time since she opened her store, a single man came to her high-altitude afternoon tea store. In the past, the only men who visited the store were take-out delivery men and guys who came with their girlfriends.
The young man in his 20s was, in her words, "very down-to-earth", but the man ordered afternoon tea and walked into a white room set up as an elaborate king-size bed - with feathered lamps, a crystal crown, fluffy pillows and a pink robe. The not-so-fashionable man took a bunch of templates for hipster photos and asked the store owner to take his picture.
"We tried so hard to help him, but we couldn't get that hipster look," said Huang Yingrou, "but after taking dozens of shots to show him, and he was quite happy with them, I was relieved."
In Chungking Mansions, McGrattan wrote about Chungking Mansions on Nathan Road in Hong Kong as "a representative of low-end cosmopolitanism, on the fringe of the center of the world". Businessmen from Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia come here to make money, white drug addicts with broken hearts stay in cheap hotels, and international asylum seekers come here to seek refuge. Tourists, businessmen, sex workers, temporary laborers, and people of different religions survive here, making Chungking Mansions a conflicted yet vibrant zone of contradictions.
Redding International, on the other hand, is the Chongqing Mansion of Chongqing. It is also a paradox of conflict and integration: here, people of different trades and forms of business come and go, with their own little jianghu.
Some of the restaurants will give you a sense of outdated time dislocation: some of the private kitchens seem to have all the outdated elements of Netflix in one - the checkout bar has the fake cherry trees of a Japanese restaurant, the cutlery is Chinese enamel cups commonly found in Nanluoguxiang, and the walls have murals of the "Workers have the power", and the walls are decorated with the "Workers have the power" mural. The mural of "Worker's Power" on the wall looks like it is crowded; some stores are popular models on Jitterbug, Shutterbug and Xiaohongbook, such as Zhang Xue's and Huang Yingru's afternoon tea store, even on weekday afternoons there is a non-stop flow of customers, and even those who saw Xiaohongbook and rushed from the field.
The owners themselves will each string together: in the off-season, the owner of the afternoon tea store will go downstairs to play mahjong at the board game bar; and the staff of the nail salon will occasionally go next door to the private kitchen for a get-together.
More often than not, they just treat each other as passers-by, because no one knows how long they can stay open - Redding International's low start-up costs also mean that many of the stores are extremely replicable, and with so many entrants, it's hard to stay.
"Here, open more than 3 years has been considered a long time," said Zhang Xue, "We are relatively early to open the wedding experience photo studio in Chongqing, but just opened in May, and now there are some similar stores in other places to open out."
Huang Yingrou recently bought a lot of new Halloween-themed decorations on Taobao, intending to take advantage of the off-season when the school year starts in September to redecorate the store. Her high-altitude afternoon tea store, despite its popularity, does not have a high turnover rate, and she has to change the theme to get young girls to want to come and take pictures.The young man who runs the Cat Cafe in Block C has more than a dozen cats in his store, but there are four or five similar stores on the same floor, and they do more business with acquaintances - friends who bring their own cats to play with them.
They have more or less thought about getting out - out of the dimly lit elevator rooms and the crowded layout of four staircases and 12 or 13 homes, and out of the noisy and dirty patio.
A private restaurant on the 43rd floor, Wandering Map, has succeeded so far. They have been here for more than four years, has dished up the same floor of the three stores, but also in the neighborhood of late-night snacks a street Chongqing nine streets opened a storefront store, no longer a small store in the building.