BEIJING -- On a tour of the model homes in Palais De Fortune, sales manager Cai Siyu points out features one might expect in any French-style chateau. There are sculptures of cherubs adorning the front gate, a Swarovski crystal chandelier hanging above a sweeping central staircase, and a maid in a lace-ruffled uniform waiting at the front door.
Next door, just 33 feet away, another miniature Versailles rises out of the Beijing smog, and down the road there are 172 more just like it. The sight is a jarring reminder that this gated community, where houses cost about $5 million and measure approximately 15,000 square feet, isn't in France. It's one of the most exclusive, if architecturally incongruous, neighborhoods in China. A peek inside offers a view of what it's like to be rich in a country that's still coming to terms with being communist in name only.
Just a generation ago, wealth in China was considered a sign of corruption. Most rich Chinese hid their fortunes, fearing that the government would confiscate their money or put them in jail. Today, two decades after the post-Mao economic reforms that transformed the country -- there are 106 Chinese billionaires, according to the Hurun Report rich list -- many Chinese still don't like to talk about their wealth. But they're not ashamed to show it off.
The lavish, granite-clad homes in the 82-acre Palais De Fortune embody new China's infatuation with foreign lifestyles, or, at least, its image of them. "Our developers went to France to study the style," Mr. Cai says.
During the model-home tour, he shows off the gleaming white "Western style" kitchen, which features a coffee maker, a wine rack, an oven and other appliances, plus a bowl of plastic fruit. Palais De Fortune, notes the marketing brochure, "represents the lifestyle of top rich families around the world."
About 75 similar luxury developments, which the Chinese have dubbed "villa compounds," have been built in Beijing and Shanghai in recent years. The district where Palais De Fortune is located, on the way to Beijing's airport, is the site of more than a dozen suburban-style developments. The gated compounds come complete with cookie-cutter villas that cost millions of dollars, international schools and manicured golf courses. Initially, homes in these communities attracted expatriates, but now, real estate agents say, they're being bought up by Chinese, too, many of whom have made their fortunes in manufacturing, property and finance.
Despite the obvious Western influences, the compounds are uniquely Chinese. Tucked around the corner from that Western kitchen in the Palais model home is a more functional, "Chinese style" one, outfitted with a wok range and a grease-filtering range hood. And the developments are situated among factories and farms; indeed, sheep sometimes graze near the Palais front entrance. The mansions there are made all the more striking by their proximity to a village of migrant construction workers across the street.
It isn't easy for an individual to build a large, private residence in Beijing or Shanghai. In part, that's because of government planning, the response to a housing shortage brought on by millions of workers streaming into urban centers in search of jobs. Looking to maximize land use, the government sold off large plots to developers, who built dense apartment blocks or, farther away from the city centers, exclusive enclaves for the rich.
"It is a very different situation than what you would see in the States," says Edward Cheung, the China chief executive of property consulting company DTZ. "The government's policy of land sales means it only makes sense to sell mass parcels, rather than small plots of land."
Even though the government helped create the villa phenomenon, lately it has shown it isn't entirely comfortable with the idea, amid China's growing wealth gap. Earlier this year, Beijing forbade billboard ads for luxury villas. And last year, the government introduced a nationwide ban on new villa compounds, though work continues on previously approved projects. The effort may have slowed a high-end real estate bubble, but it has also increased the price of houses in some existing developments.
Inside these subdivisions there's another local real-estate quirk: Developers usually pack in the mansions one right next to another, an effort to squeeze value out of expensive property. In Palais De Fortune, each three-story villa sits on little more than a third of an acre. The view out some windows, through the gold-tipped wrought-iron fencing that encloses each copycat property, looks right into the windows of the house next door. And since the tight plots allow little room for backyards, swimming pools are often built in the basements of the houses. Privacy is another reason for the indoor pools, as is the desire to escape from Beijing's windy, dusty climate.
The cramped plots don't bother one wealthy customer touring Palais de Fortune on a recent afternoon. "I like the overall atmosphere of the community," says the textile tycoon, who asked not to be identified. Like other visitors, he is wearing blue plastic booties that look like shower caps over his shoes, to keep the dust from Beijing's streets off the marble floors. "I think I would make some good relationships with the neighbors," he says, sipping tea in the show house's drawing room. Here, as with most Chinese villa compounds, the property management company also plans community activities, ranging from ball games to cigar clubs and swimming activities. (The fee for this service is about $1,300 per month.) Focal points for social activities include a lush community garden and a giant clubhouse, which resembles a Parisian train station.
Privileged and Anxious
Living in such an exclusive community itself conveys a sense of privilege. But it also reflects a growing anxiety about violence against the wealthy, not surprising in a country where the booming economy is creating a widening gulf between rich and poor. In 2004, there were more than 3,800 reported kidnappings in China, according to a report in Oriental Look, a respected Chinese magazine; in 1997, there were just 38. In one high-profile case last year, a forestry bureau official and his wife were both stabbed to death inside their Beijing villa.
As a result, security is a big selling point. Palais De Fortune, still under construction, has four guards for every five villas, and infrared-cameras monitor the perimeter of each house. "There are no blind areas around any of the houses. And should you have some disaster and the guard can't come, you can run into the panic room," says Mr. Cai, showing off a double-steel-door reinforced bunker in the basement. He says the panic room (which costs an extra $25,000 or more, depending on the size) will keep residents safe from gunfire, earthquakes -- even poison-gas attacks. A video screen on the wall shows what's happening at the front gate of the house, with images relayed from the cameras mounted outside. A sign on the wall explains that panic rooms have been featured in the movies and "in use for many years by the rich and famous, corporate executives and powerful figures around the world."
Bao Zhiyi, a construction worker who has lived in the settlement of laborers across the street from the Palais gates for three years, doesn't seem to resent his wealthy neighbors, even though, he says, he is not allowed inside the development. Taking a cigarette break in front of his own gate, which features a rusted crest with a lion, he says, "It's not for me. But these people are capable of making money, so they deserve it."
Copying lavish architectural styles from abroad has a long history. America's 19th-century robber barons fashioned their estates after European castles, sometimes importing them brick by brick. Spanish-style villas and Louis XIV mansions can be found almost anywhere around the world where people have money.
Still, there's a theme-park feel to much of China's luxury real estate. Rose Garden, a development with 380 houses in north Beijing and one of the city's first villa compounds, is divided into six "lands": America, Europe, Japan, Space, Canada (Toronto, Vancouver and Newfoundland) and Neoclassical North America. Sometimes, the actual differences between them can be confusing. "We have many styles here," says Zhang Yan, a Rose Garden sales manager, as she points with a pool cue at miniature models of the homes. Space is based on the city that many Chinese think epitomizes futuristic architecture: skyscraper-clad Hong Kong.
Offering a tour of Rose Garden in a golf cart, a colleague of Ms. Zhang zips past Japan and parks in a cul-de-sac in Neoclassical North America, where the houses are painstakingly crafted versions of what look like California McMansions. (The developers claim that the style was inspired by a town in Quebec called Richelieu.) In fact, there are several architectural styles in this mini-America, identified on the mailbox of each home, including Roman Holiday, Tuscan, American Classic, Sunny Mediterranean and Victorian.
Inside Roman Holiday model number 336, the decor is not as lavish as the chateaux in Palais de Fortune, but there is no less attention to detail. A boy's bedroom features wallpaper with '50s-era American images of youths playing baseball. In another bedroom there are framed photos of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Outside, a man-made river weaves among the villas -- a nod to the Chinese love of water features -- designed to resemble one of the rivers that flow toward Lake Champlain. "Water is fortune," reads the sales brochure.
"Many wealthy people here have a U.S. background, or have been heavily influenced by American culture and education," says real-estate agent Zhang Jifeng, director of the Beijing strategy department at E-House China, a real-estate services company. "They want to recreate that lifestyle here."
While some Americans might find such a heavily themed development a bit like living in Disneyland, Mr. Zhang sees nothing incongruous about that. "Is it unbelievable to Americans to live inside Disneyland?" he says. "I'm not sure a Chinese person would think that is a problem."
As China's own view of itself in the world continues to evolve, so do its tastes. At Palais de Fortune, Mr. Cai says, the developers have been easing back on French-style finishings in the newest homes, such as elaborate carvings on the exterior walls, and introducing simpler, more contemporary Chinese styles.
And several years ago, the entire Rose Garden subdivision was itself turned into a kind of traditional Chinese courtyard, when the developers added a 10-foot red wall around the perimeter. Their inspiration: the red wall that encloses Beijing's famous Forbidden City, former home to China's imperial family. "One reason we added it is to respect China's traditions," says Ms. Zhang. "The other is for security."
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source: realestatejournal.com
