After years of contemplating expansion options in Beijing, a unique site in a most fantastic area (by our standards) became available. Construction began in May 2014, with an opening scheduled for early 2015. This is an active construction site at the moment, so pictures and commentary will go up in a fairly delayed fashion..  But please stay tuned, and feel free to email us any questions or comments along the way.

Grey Bricks

Today is grey brick day again. This time an important visual part of the second floor will be raised up high in order to add a mask of traditional grey bricks on top of the new modern structure within.


Check out the view of the bell tower!


2 hours later, it is all done.


The view from within the balcony walkway


Looking at it from the courtyard

Raising the Second Floor

Here comes the second floor, structural beams and all.


On the right side is the dining room, the left is a kitchen – mostly


Up comes the kitchen

Cutting day

It’s time. Forget about safety, about cranes, tools and most other common sense. Today is completely about destruction, and big, heavy falling objects.


18 year-old up on the top, straddling the tree for dear life.


Absolutely insane worker standing beneath the falling branches holding a chainsaw on full throttle the entire time


Guiding the branches towards the floor, sometimes.


Luckily the south room’s walls and floor can take the weight


Alone on the tree still..


Crazy guy still at it with the smaller branches on the ground


Examining the large cuts of trunk.


Cutting a few thin ones too…


Loaded up and ready to go!


Mr. Guo with his gift. 15 minutes of work and he has a brand new meat cutting board.

Last moment with our tree

Tomorrow the government has promised to take down the tree, so here are a few last moment shots of what the place looks like with a giant 50 year old 25m high tree.

Lobby roof up

It’s time to get our most important central public space up. The walls have mostly been there for quite some time now, but now we get to put in the support beams for the roof and then pour in the concrete base for the floor.


Our main foreman Mr. Liu, with Mr. Guo looking on..


Concrete’s been poured in and smoothed out


Inside’s a bit dark now.


View towards the south east – the entrance.


Close up of the concrete base. This will be our kitchen!