In western cities, new cultural quarters usually develop because rents are low enough for artists to move in. Or, in the case of London's South Bank, because a determined Shakespeare enthusiast, Sam Wanamaker, decided to build a replica of the Globe Theatre there and the Tate Modern art gallery followed.

In China, cultural quarters develop because the authorities decide they should. At least, that is the theory behind 1933, a one-time abattoir that is rapidly filling with restaurants, recording studios, photographic businesses and bookshops.

1933, named for the year in which it was completed, is an intriguing, slightly forbidding structure, with a concrete lattice fa?ade. The interior is filled with uneven spaces and ascending ramps along which cattle were once herded to their death.