Open 10am-12pm
Yuanmingyuan East Gate
north of parking lot
圆明园东门内北侧
圆明园东门内停车场北侧
Price Less than Y99 per couple
8268-8003 www.mima.cn mima@sohu.com.cn

This courtyard café and bar in the university district has a polished, scholarly vibe. The outdoor tables are usually filled with studying students; inside, light filters through the floor-to-ceiling windows across the colorful sofas and a bar that’s cleverly built of stacked books. Nosh from a simple menu of Western snacks (pizza, pasta), and don’t miss the bathroom, with its Plexiglas roof that doubles as a goldfish pond.

If you’re looking for something that seems a little artsy and a little intellectual at the same time, with one of the coolest – or oddest – bathrooms on earth – visit the MIMA Café, one of Beijing’s coolest digs. The MIMA Café is located in Yuan Ming Yuan Park in Beijing, on the outskirts of the city, in the Haidan district. This well-known café is in the northeast corner of the ruins of Yuan Ming Yuan Imperial Garden, next to architect Zhang Yonghe’s Atelier FCJZ Design Studio. If you didn’t know it was there, you might miss it.

The café originally evolved in a small courtyard with three rooms, occupying 100 square meters. but years of neglect took a toll on the area. The yard was deserted and fell into ruin. But Wang Hui, a former designer with Aterlier FCJZ Studio, and Fei Bin, an economic analyst, took a fancy to the yard and gave it a simple renovation. MIMA was opened in November 2003. MIMA stands for “MIX + MAX,” “maximum mix.”Wang Hui, MIMA’s designer, graduated from architecture department of Northeast Industry University. His projects include the Ali Hope Elementary School in Tibet, a private villa in Guangdong, and a hospital in Ningbo. Referring to his style of design, Wang Hui says, “ I am quite casual. No style is my style. I hope what I design is in harmony with the surroundings.”

The washroom is the most compelling part of MIMA. The designer chose the most convenient location in the yard. The little outhouse is not more than 15 meters square, and it is built on stilts, in the style of the bamboo folk houses in China’s western Jiangxi Province. With a mirrored façade made of stainless steel, the little square house can reflect the bamboo grove, the yard and people passing by. A transparent-bottomed fish pool sits on the roof of the house. When people come to answer the call of nature, looking up they can see the sky beyond the pool of water and they feel as if they are underwater at the same time.

The floor is also made of glass and raised above the ground, so people can see cats walking through the crawl space under the floor. With the transparent top and bottom, the experience is new, even a little awkward and over-exposed. But it brings an elevated sense of play into the quotidian, even mundane, experience of using the washroom, especially to those accustomed to a high level of privacy.

The café is less unexpected than the washroom. “I initially wanted the present the space in a clearly outlined way,” Wang Hui says. The interior is furnished in white. The room is divided into three parts, and they each feature white fabric sofas, brown leather tables and chairs and geometric tables with mirrored surfaces. The entrance bar is stocked with a pile of 5,000 books in a variety of languages. It took one worker an entire month to stock the bookshelves, , and it has become a highlight behind Wang Hui’s “MIX + MAX” concept.

Conceptually, every detail in the interior space was designed to create the effect of the room being larger than reality. In order to achieve this affect, the dropped ceiling was removed to expose the beams. Any objects interrupting sightlines have been painted white. The mirrored surface of the tables also created a feeling of more space. When the lights go down, the mirrors have the added benefit of reflecting candle light, romantically transforming the space in the evening. The café is open late. It also occasionally hosts literary events and is popular with the students living in the Haidan district.