Taitou, Gaocun


Taitou is a newly built village in Gaocun township, Wuqing District, Tianjin.

Location

Located just two kilometres from the Gaocun exit of the Jingjintang Expressway, Taitou offers excellent transportation links to Beijing and Tianjin.
Taitou is a vibrant community of relocated farmers surrounded by agricultural land and thousands of vacant new buildings. Many of the empty buildings in the surrounding area were constructed during a speculative real estate bubble in the early 2010s. While occupancy rates in Taitou are very high, occupancy rates of housing and shopping malls in the surrounding area are still extremely low. The surrounding area could be described as a Chinese ghost city.
In late 2018, house prices dropped from 15,384 Chinese yuan per square metre to 11,771 Chinese yuan per square metre in just two months.

Commercial activity

Within Taitou residential compound

In Taitou building 21 (commercial space)

Outside Taitou North Gate

  • various commercial ventures
For safety reasons, no cars are permitted to enter this gate. Pedestrians, bicycles and electric rickshaws are allowed.

Outside Taitou West Gate

Around Taitou

Wisdom Plaza

Air quality

The air quality as measured by the air quality index (AQI) in nearby Langfang varies from excellent to severely polluted. In summer months, the AQI is usually around 100, while in winter months, AQI of 300+ is common. In May 2017, the AQI of Langfang and other cities in the Jingjinji area exceeded an extremely hazardous 1000 points.
The lack of an extremely polluted winter in 2017/18 is owed to policies from the central Chinese government that placed severe restrictions on heavily-polluting manufacturing plants and coal furnaces used for heating.

Renovation process of 2016-17

Shortly after construction of the Taitou residential compound was completed, and after residents had moved in, major renovation works were carried out on the exterior walls of all 21 buildings at Taitou.
The process included:
  1. Chipping away the existing stone cladding
  2. Removing the old Rockwool insulation material from the external walls
  3. Installing new, upgraded Rockwool insulation material to the external walls
  4. Painting the exterior walls white
  5. Painting the exterior walls black
  6. Covering every face of every building with masking tape in a brickwork pattern
  7. Painting the buildings beige then peeling off the masking tape to reveal a brickwork pattern
The exterior wall renovation process took nearly 12 months to complete, during which, the compound was littered with dust, rubble and debris. After the exterior wall insulation was finished, workers planted hundreds of trees and bushes around the residential compound.
Haileybury International School used some of the Taitou debris as material for its elective handicraft activity.