First of all, I thank Brïn for giving me the idea to go on this urbex, after looking at his post here. And I was not disappointed! Although it is very small, it is a pretty amazing place. This abandoned luxury villa compound is actually located inside Beijing Olympic park. How did this happen?

The story of a real-estate failure

The story seems quite common in China: one of the many real-estate development projects that went bankrupt. Yet the total sum of money owed on this project, which was launched in 1995 – 1,1 billion yuans – surpassed the former biggest debt in Beijing’s real estate history of 790 million yuans ¹, on a very limited land area (7,7 ha), as the Beijing N°1 Intermediate People’s Court stated in 2001. In the case of Imperial Garden villas, the debtee, Honggao Yuyuan Real Estate company, a Chinese and Hong Kong-funded company, was declared bankrupt. The court seized all the 94 villas of the project and six cars owned by the company. The unfinished villa compound was never inhabitated. Two years later, the Beijing city government introduced the urban plan for the Olympic Village. An important proportion of villas seized from Honggao company were included on the surface of the redevelopment project. The reaction of the Beijing city government was to wait and study the villa situation. It was very difficult to find any more information about the case. I was able to find an advertisement video from 1998 presenting how the compound was supposed to look like, celebrating a luxurious, international, prestigious lifestyle.

However, far from reproducing The Great Gatsby movie set, the current situation looks more like The Walking Dead.

Post-zombie attack atmosphere

Even with this beautiful sunny weather, the place felt creepy, just like a suburban neighbourhood after zombie attacks.

Most villas are in extremely bad shape with big holes everywhere, even in the concrete floors. I could not risk to explore the ones that looked really dangerous as I went alone on this urbex. So I just checked the inside of one of them.

Let’s take a closer look.

There is a famous luxury clubhouse in decay, the HOMKO Club, but I did not take many pictures as I had to leave, I heard the security guard closeby.

But then some time later, I went to the clubhouse, so you can discover my second report about this place by clicking here.