An Arabic cafe called A Thousand and One Nights opened just a year ago on Gong Ti North Road, a tree-lined avenue near Beijing's Workers' Stadium. It attracted a lot of attention, extending the range of exotic cuisine in the Chinese capital. Just recently its Syrian owner, Dr Farid Fakhour, erected a glass conservatory hung with artificial vines outside the restaurant.
Yesterday afternoon I was able to enjoy fetoush salad at a pavement table, despite the chill of late winter, and watch shoppers stroll along the popular strip of shops and cafes.
But perhaps the Arabic restaurant should be renamed The 365 Nights, because after just 12 months it is to be reduced to a heap of rubble any day now. Dr Fakhour told me that he has received a notice to the effect that all the small businesses on his side of the road are to be demolished for the laying of heating pipes and road widening.
In China, arbitrary planning decisions are often made without regard to leases, and Dr Fakhour will get no compensation for the investment he made or the goodwill, despite holding a four-year lease. He feels "very sad" he said "not just at losing the money but the business from his regular customers".
A near neighbour, Ms Jenny Lou (28), who runs the grocery store beside the Baskin Robins ice cream shop, has also been served notice to quit after countless hours of toil building up her popular Gong Ti North Road shop. One of the most successful and cheerful Chinese traders in Beijing, she graduated in three years from selling vegetables from a street barrow to become the owner of three shops and a Hyundai car. Jenny Lou secured a five-year lease for the shop in 1997, but because it is a government-owned building, she said, it counts for nothing.
Such experiences by small business people are not uncommon in China. Private enterprise was legalised in 1988 but it has no body of protective law. Schoolbooks still teach children that the final aim of socialism is to abolish private property, and those who decide to xiahai, or jump into the sea of business, find that there are many obstacles to be negotiated in a market economy which pays lip service to communist ideology.
In the green-carpeted billiard room of the plush Chang'an Club, a successful Beijing businesswoman, Ms Wang Lin, told me that to create her import-export company she had to spend a lot of time befriending and sometimes paying off officials.
Just 27 years old, and wearing diamond ear studs and a gold watch, Ms Wang is the general manager of Beijing Galanfiz Trading Company, a wholly-owned private company with 20 employees which she established in 1995. She travels business class to Italy and Austria to select Leflorett and Wolford brand ladies underwear for Beijing's upmarket stores and is one of the new elite of Chinese executives who use the plush club near Tiananmen square to bowl, exercise and meet clients.
But success comes at a price. Ms Wang has to provide expensive gifts for Chinese officials to get permits and has to sweeten journalists with envelopes stuffed with "taxi-money" to get media coverage, a common practice in China. But, she said, "I am not worried about the future or that China will go back to the old ways."
One reason for her optimism is a change to the Chinese constitution to be voted on today by the National People's Congress in Beijing. Business people like Ms Wang are confident this will clear the way for new laws and regulations to support the private sector, which now accounts for a quarter of China's Gross Domestic Product and 37 per cent of China's retail sales.
Mr Tian Jiyun, vice-chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, explained that the constitutional amendments would upgrade the private sector from a "complement to the socialist public sector" to an "important component of the socialist market economy".
Public ownership will remain dominant but diverse forms of ownership will now exist side by side. The still politically weak private sector has lobbied for far-reaching change, asking for equal standing with state firms regarding freedom from official interference, bank credit, taxes and acquisition of state assets.
The amendments still do not fully embrace the private sector but a Congress official promised at least a new law forcing people to respect contracts and leases, at present based on trust with little legal backing where often "I owe you money but do not pay, I am owed money by someone else but he does not pay".
The changes do not go far enough for one of China's richest men, Mr Zhang Hongwei, chairman of the Orient Group in Harbin, with interests in property and other sectors. All firms, whether state-owned, foreign joint ventures or private, should be treated the same, he said.
Significantly, Mr Zhang was given space to make this point in the People's Daily, the organ of the Communist Party which outlawed private property in China in 1956.
Since Deng Xiaoping sanctioned the return of the bourgeoisie 20 years ago, the number of private companies in China has grown to 12 million and there are 31 million individual businesses, with 16,500 people starting up every day, many of them laid-off workers.
After 20 years in China, Dr Fakhour knew what he was up against when he opened A Thousand and One Nights, and has adopted the combination of stoicism and drive so necessary to get ahead in modern China. "When I lose something, I forget about it," he said, and he is already planning to open a new restaurant nearby.