Your Last-Minute Guide to Renting a Halloween Costume
It’s too late for Taobao. It’s too late for that really creative costume you said to yourself you’d make after your hastily-prepared “wacky sunglasses” outfit last year failed to impress the ladies.
Yes, Halloween season gets into full swing tonight, and over the course of the next four days no less than 100 parties are happening around town.
Luckily, there are still options: thanks to the combination of Beijing’s fleet of Uber drivers, its highly developed public transportation system, and a smattering of costume rental shops, it’s possible for you – with less than half a day to go before the parties to begin in earnest – to find yourself a decent costume.
Let’s not expect a miracle here folks, most of the costumes do not fall under the Halloween variety. These shops exist mostly for “extras” use in Beijing’s myriad television and film productions. But there’s plenty in there to be found if you take it all with a grain of salt; me being a last-minute guy managed to find a decent gothic vampire outfit and a Chinese zombie outfit last night in under an hour with little trouble.
Rentals are generally RMB 80 per day and require a RMB 400 deposit; bring cash but these days you can do it all with WeChat Pay.
The bad news: most of these shops do not have staff that are fluent in English; the good news is they all have websites full of pictures that you can peruse in advance to see what costumes they have (though not necessarily in stock).
We’ve arranged this by area so you last-minute costume shoppers can do this efficiently; most shops are open from 9am to 7pm and will be open over the weekend.
Shuangjing/Jinsong
The Baihuan Jiayuan compound is the Holy Grail of costume shopping because it contains not one but two costume shops hidden in amongst its slummy high rise glory. Easily accessible by subway; jump off on the southeast side of Shuangjing station or the northeast side of Jinsong station.
Dong Fang Mei (东方美) fuzhuangguoji.com
Baijia Huayuan Bldg 18, Room 1008 (6771 5585, 150 0107 1280)
北京市朝阳区东三环广渠路66号双井桥百环家园18号楼1008室
Shang Pin Clothes Leasing (北京尚品衣然商贸有限公司) spyr.cn
Baijia Huayuan Bldg 2, Room 809 (6704 8955, 150 0122 8615)
北京市朝阳区双井桥东百环家园北区广渠路66号2号楼809
Haidian
Dong Fang Mei (东方美) fuzhuangguoji.com
Taiyang Garden, Bldg 6, Room 1608, Zhichun Lu (8205 1890)
知春路太月园6号楼1608室
Fengtai
Huan Run (寰润) fuzhuangzulin.com
5/F Section B, Huabao Apartments, Liuliqiao Beili (5979 8013, 6395 0318, 133 6676 2828)
北京六里桥北里华宝公寓B区5层 1000平米旗舰库区
Not too far from the Liuliqiao station on Line 10. This is one of the larger showrooms of costumes, at over 1,000 square meters, so its almost worth the hike. At one time they had a tiny satellite shop in CBD's Wanda Plaza, but at the time of publishing we could not get in touch with the number listed (153 0028 3107) for the Wanda shop.
Beeta (贝塔) beeta.cn
129 Chengshou Lu, East of Fangzhuang Qiao (6844 4222, 5949 2832)
丰台区方庄桥东成寿寺路129号贝塔商务中心,上海海阔天空浴场对面
Image: Shang Pin Clothes Leasing
