"Many time-honored shops that originated from Qianmen have decided to come back," said Tian Yun, Board Chairman of Tianjie Real Estate Development Co., Ltd. "When we first made the commercial plan for Qianmen Street, we had already decided to leave 20 percent of space for time-honored shops."

The government of Chongwen District launched an investment-invitation project, targeted at attracting Chinese and international brands. Now, many world famous brands, including Starbucks, Rolex and Nike, have settled on the street. The exterior decoration of these shops is required to show a "Chinese face."

"After the renovation, all the residents here moved to other places, so we will lose some of the most faithful customers. At the same time, since the rent for the shops is higher, the price will go up as well, so it is hard to say whether we can make a stable profit," said Feng Fusheng, the boss of a famous snack restaurant. "Now the customers are mostly domestic and foreign tourists."

Many of the time-honored brands in Qianmen area are snack restaurants of relatively small scale. "Considering this, we have constructed a snack building, which occupies 6,000 square meters, on the southern end of the avenue, to gather together these snack restaurants," said Tian.

Last year, the government of Chongwen District launched a preferential policy to support the time-honored shops: allocating 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) every year to help the old shops return.

However, some people who are familiar with the old Qianmen area have concerns about how much the restoration work will help to keep the original flavor of old Beijing. Jiang Liming, Vice General Manager of B.A. Consulting Co., said that it would be very difficult for Qianmen to rely on the restoration of old buildings to recover its cultural and commercial atmosphere. "The original culture of Qianmen cannot simply grow up in the new pseudo-classic buildings and commercialized shops," he said.