Chou Shangli: Jing Yuan Image Base

When 40-year-old commercial photographer Chou Shang-li came to Beijing from Taiwan a year ago he found the studio of his dreams Jing Yuan Image Base, located near the east Fifth Ring Road in Chaoyang district.

"It's the perfect time to be in Beijing, to bring variety to this creative industry," says Chou who has collaborated with fashion magazines like Bazaar and has taken pictures of celebrities like actress Zhang Ziyi, as well as shooting ads for Coca Cola and Panasonic.

"Beijing has that combination of possibility and opportunity, as well as being a city with a profound cultural base in its own right," says Chou, who owns two photo studios at Image Base. "There is still a hunger and openness for new things, so there's room for people like me."

Chou says that before choosing Image Base, he also visited places like the 798 art district. "The rent is too high now which means that the market is asking for more art space. Image Base is relatively new and the visual theme of the area is good," he says.

Image Base, which was renovated from an old cotton factory, is home to more than 100 workshops and artists working in mainly visual media.

"We have a clear theme for Image Base which is different from 798 art district and other creative industry zones in Beijing," says Hu Aihua, a real estate developer and the vice-president of Image Base. "The good thing is that the government is paying attention to the capital's art zones."

The project, which covers 100,000-sq-m, was started in 2006 with an investment of more than 80 million yuan. As a photography enthusiast, Hu says the opening exhibition about the Sichuan earthquake gave the base a real start after months of preparation.

She says she hopes Image Base will be comprehensively developed.

"Creative art zones such as 798 and Songzhuang were spontaneous, while the new zones are more organized and well-planned. It is not a competition. The country needs more of these kinds of areas to diversify and promote the development of creative industries in China."