Silk Street is a shopping center in Beijing that accommodates over 1,700 retail vendors, notorious among international tourists for their wide selection of counterfeit designer brand apparels.
The Xiushui Silk Street was originated in 1982 when a group of ambitious youth started their business at Silk Eastern Road, Beijing, with very simple stalls at that time. They dealt in silk and foreign-trade apparels. Though simple and crude, the inherent charm of Silk Street then was not glossed over. The silk street got its name in 1985 when more and more vendors began to sell traditional Chinese silk products and crafts. Its repute spread fast, and more and more customers and travelers are attracted by the reasonable price of its products. The former Xiushui Silk Street is an outdoor market. Since 1985, Xiushui Silk Street has been popular with overseas tourists who have flocked to buy counterfeit and knock-off luxury clothes and accessories. Fake brands with good quality are what the Xiushui Silk Street was famous for, but measures have been taken to curb that as well. Law enforcement workers with the Chaoyang branch of the Beijing Administration of Industry and Commerce have confiscated numerous shoes of pirated Nike, counterfeit Adidas shoes and fake sports suits for the past decades.
On 19 March 2005, Beijing Silk Street High-rise, which draws lots of attentions, is open for business officially. New Silk Street is built next to the original market. It has five floors on the ground and three on the underground, with a building area of altogether 28,000 sq. m, and a capacity of thousands of stalls. After more than 20 years development, the two characters “Xiu Shui” have become a famous brand among the sphere of commodity circulation in Beijing. The Silk Street High-rise is tightly near CBD ( Central Business District), the total floorage amount to 28,000 square meters, and there are 1,500 stalls in the market. Though the shopping center's management group promises to weed out counterfeit or poor quality goods in the market, and there are fewer imitation brand name goods sold at Xiushui Market than there used to be along Silk Street, there is still no way to completely keep knock-offs out of the market.
Xiushui Market
