So I finally had a chance to peruse the new Shin Kong Place shopping mall that Kaiser Kuo first blogged about. It’s one subway stop east of Guo Mao, usually the furthest extreme of any luxury shopping in Beijing. Now you’ve got a reason to venture out one more station.
In one word – incredible. It is as high end as it gets in Beijing, and this six story mall is as modern and luxurious as anything you’ll see in Singapore and Hong Kong. And unlike many other mall launches in China, nearly everything is open and doing business right now — food court, gourmet grocery, department store and all.

The one notable exception — Fauchon, the Paris-based gourmet chain. They are preparing not one, not two, but three floors for their store. This marks their first one in China, and only their second in Asia. As someone who used to buy bagfulls of stuff from their shop in Paris to take back home, I’m counting down the minutes.
Again, I’m not sure this is entirely sustainable, having all these high end malls battling for limited consumers. You are already seeing problems filling up places like Oriental Plaza, The Place and China World Trade Center. We may be seeing a drastic crash post-2008 with too much luxury commercial spaces and too few customers.

But in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the pate.