The open-air shopping complex that turned Sanlitun from a grubby bar strip into Beijing's flagship retail and lifestyle district. Designed as a cluster of low, irregular glass-and-colour blocks threaded with pedestrian lanes, Taikoo Li splits into a North zone of luxury labels and a livelier South zone of mainstream brands, restaurants, a cinema, and the city's largest Apple Store.
It is as much a place to watch fashionable young Beijing as to shop, and the lanes stay busy into the evening when the surrounding bars and restaurants fill up. The flagship stores here are often a brand's only mainland China outlet, which gives the complex a genuine pull beyond ordinary mall shopping.