There's plenty of money in China-and plenty of people planning on making a whole lot more. More than 20 years of sustained economic growth have created a whirlpool of change, warping a static society into something altogether less predictable. Some have been pulled into the vortex; others are treading water. But the momentum is unstoppable."This is a great time to be young in china," explains Angela Low, a twenty something Malaysia-born marketing executive who relocated to Beijing from London in March.” Everybody has a get-rich-quick plan. From promoting fetish parties to importing Belgian chocolate. It feels like anything is possible.”

Low's optimism is endorsed by a whole generation of 25 to 40 year olds. This is the same generation that has spawned a house-price-obsessed middle-class, fashionable urban enclaves, and estate agents. China today is a fertile breeding ground for strange happenings-such as the construction of an exclusive enclave for the super wealthy 60km from Beijing in the shadow of the Great Wall. The Commune is a weekend getaway with a difference. It's a honey-trap for china's growing breed of flashy and increasingly consumption-conscious millionaires. Only a country on the move could come up with something like this.

There's one entrance. Via a winding private road accessed from one of China's new eight-lane motorways. Towards the end of the Great Wall, the landscape evolves from a flat airless concrete-scape into a comparative haven of undulating hills, covered in tea estates and walnut trees. It's dry walk north and you'll find the Gobi Desert. Add it's very quiet. The Great Wall dictates the atmosphere.

The road reaches a fork, and straight-ahead is the Clubhouse, an impressive building which houses a swimming pool. a galley of contemporary Chinese art, two restaurants and office space. A steep, twisting valley leads you towards the Wall. En route you'll pass11 luxury villas, designed by the cream of young Asian architects. Outside each is a uniformed guard. Photographers are particularly unwelcome. “We really want to keep this a secret,” explains my guide. The overall effect is of an abandoned James Bond set or an international expo. With national pavilions competing for attention.

There's he Bamboo House, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, in which the wood is applied as both a construction material and a cultural reference point. The concept is simple: use bamboo and black granite to design a luxury six-bed roomed villa. The highlight of Kuma's creation is the meditation space. At the end of the dining room a door opens on to a thin granite bridge, which traverses a shallow moat, and leads to a bamboo cage. It takes a while to work out that the cage is composed of sliding doors, but once you've made it, the view of the Great Wall is breathtaking.

Shigeru Ban, another Japanese architect, and perhaps the best known of the11 design the Furniture House. In recent years Ban has made a reputation using treated cardboard tubes as a construction material. After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, he constructed a cardboard church for mourners in only one day. The previous year, following the humanitarian crisis in Rwanda, his design for cheap housing provided shelter for thousands, Ban's contribution is low-key. The one-story square house is set around an exposed courtyard. The living space, which includes five bedrooms and two large reception areas, is lined throughout with built-in cupboards and seating. As far as possible Ban has tried to incorporate furniture as a structural device, to support the building. Following the Kobe earthquake it was revealed that many live could have been saved if furniture had been secured to the floor and walls. The consequence is an almost Zen like sterility, but it is certainly the most human-scale of the villas.

Only one of the villas is the work of a female architect, Thailand's Kanika R'kul. Her three-storey white-walled mansion wouldn't look out of place on a Santa Monica hillside-it contains more than a hint of Richard Meier's luxurious white minimalism. Built around a full-height courtyard, the distinction between external and internal areas in blurred. Entertainment space is located on the ground and top floors; perhaps the key selling points are the ascending roof terraces.

Designed by Hong Kong architect Gary Chang, the Suitcase House is inspired by the versatility of contemporary luggage, Just as a suitcase can adapt to the requirements of its owner, so the house can adapt to the whims of its occupants. Moveable walls facilitate the creation of private spaces. Floor cavities can be used as bedrooms, workspace of for storage. A galley kitchen and bathroom are squeezed into a mezzanine level underneath the main living space. Pan shiyi, 39, and Zhang Xin, 36, Beijing-based husband and wife real-estate innovators dreamed up the commune. Towards the end of 2000, after buying the 8sq km site, and securing clearance to build on it-no construction is allowed within 200 meters of the Great Wall-they invited 12 Asian architects to visit the site and discuss ideas for luxury villas. There are three Chinese architects, three Japanese, two from Hong Kong, and one each from Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea. Zhang had originally hoped to include architects from Pakistan and India as well. The only stipulations were that they be as flamboyant as possible, and accept the$12,000design fee-a pittance in architectural terms.

Pan and Zhang's plan was to create a gap in the property market. Since a change to the mortgage law in 1998, which reduced the required deposit from 50 to 20 per cent of the value of the property. Opening the market to a huge number of people. Home buying has become one of urban china's most popular pastimes. One thing hasn't changed, however: nobody but the state can own land in china and residential properties have a maximum long-term lease of70 years.

Pan and Zhang were just two of the developers who did extremely well out of the expanded market when they bought land-use rights for their residential development. In 1996 they began work on SOHO Newtown (Small Office, Home Office), close to Beijing's Central Business District. They introduced the concept of live/work space to China. SOHO's 2,000 units, arranged in ten 20-storey towers, are now almost sold out.

By the end of 1999, with SOHO New-town up and running, Pan Shiyi began to reassess the market. Volume housing at middle-of-the-road prices RMB400, 000-600,00(￡30,000-￡45,000) was reaching saturation point. It was time for something else, time to introduce China to the notion of the second home. But with first homes still a relative novelty, only the wealthy would be in a position to buy twice. Something extra-ordinary was required. “Our vision was to build an architectural museum of private houses, to influence a whole generation of architects, developers and consumers in China,” says Zhang. “This is a very special time for our country it's a time of opportunities. Long-suppressed energy has been released.” For Zhang a logical consequence of this dynamism is,“search for a contemporary architectural identity.”

Zhang was awarded a special prize at the eighth architectural Biennale in Venice recently, in recognition of her work as a patron of contemporary architecture. The commune is a project that everyone who is anyone in china wants to be involved with. Companies including Audi have held glitzy parties on the site, whose own opening bash was attended by more That 2,000 of Beijing's movers and shakers.

The first 11 villas comprise the first phase of the Commune. When the development is complete (summer of 2005), 59 villas will occupy the site. The remaining 48 will be built in two phases. All of them will be replicas of the original 11. Phase II began at the end of June. The 24villas will be ready to move into by the beginning of next summer. In the middle of last month, the existing villas opened as a hotel, the idea being for potential buyers to spend a weekend on the Commune, before deciding whether they'd like to invest in a Phase II or Phase III property. But with overnight hotel prices starting at $1,000 per night, and the cheapest house priced at RMB 8million($1 million), only a certain kind of guest will be attracted by the prospect. To put this in perspective, $1 million is about 1,000times the annual income for an urban family.

So who will be able to afford to buy a property at the Commune?

“I think half will be Chinese, and perhaps the other half will come from South-East Asia,” says Pan, “I'd expect the buyers to be young, professional, educated people,” says Zhang Xin.

Yes, but how have these people made their money? And who are they?

“Well, maybe they'd be people a little like my husband and me,” says Zhang.

Pan Shiyi was brought up in Gansu Province, a heavily polluted area of central China. He grew up against a backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, Mao's drive to eradicate pre-Communist Chinese culture (1966-1976). Like so many other families, the Pans were victims of vicious repressions. Pan Shiyi's father, having expressed independent political views, was branded a dissident in the early Seventies. For much of the decade the family was homeless. Things began to improve in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping ushered in a phase of tolerant Communism. His father was pardoned and, following graduation, Pan began to work for the Ministry of petroleum. The big break came in 1988 when he took the almost unprecedented step of resigning from his respectable government post and going south, to the liberal economic zones of Hainan and Shenzhen. It was here that the sowed the seeds of a career in real estate speculation. Pan arrived in Beijing in 1992. Today, the once homeless country boy is Co-CEO of SOHO China Ltd.

Zhang Xin's story is equally dramatic. She was brought up in Beijing, but in 1979, aged 14, she moved with her family to Hong Kong. In the evenings she worked in the textile sweatshops. During the day she worked her way through school. In the mid-Eighties she secured sponsorship to read development economics at Sussex University, which she followed with a Masters at Cambridge University, and four years as a banker on Wall Street. She married Pan at the end of 1995, and returned to Beijing. “I came back because it was clear that the opportunities here were just as good as anywhere else,” says Zhang. “China was one a county that people couldn't wait to leave; it is now a place to stay in. It is increasingly Part of the international community. We don't feel isolated any more.”

The wealthy in China fall into three categories. There are loyal state officials, or children of loyal state officials; young entrepreneurs, who have benefited from the increasingly favorable market conditions; or returnees, people who fled China for a better life, but now realize that there are few better places to make a buck Pan and Zhang cover the latter two categories.

Wang Jian Guo represents the first. For more than 20years Wang, 49, was a loyal servant of the government. During the early Eighties he was in control of missile frequencies at the Radio and Wireless Committee. A decade later he was appointed mayor of pingu, a suburb of Beijing. He did well enough to be offered a post overseeing the management and administration of Tiananmen Square. But Wang rejected the offer, and that was the end of his state career. In 1996 he established the Beijing Heng Yuan Construction Company, which produced a number of those air-conditioned malls. Today he runs a real-estate venture, a publishing house and imports animal feed from India.

Wang is one of the many prepared to spend whatever it takes on one of the gleaming new houses at the Commune. “But there's no way I'd live there. It's much too big for me and my wife.” Says Wang He's hoping to use it to entertain friends and business. Contacts. “Everybody is talking about the Commune. I know people who would be prepared to spend much more than RMB8 million,” adds Wang. “It's such an experimental concept. The houses look like nothing we've ever seen before. For so long we've been used to government officials dictating the style and proportions of buildings.

"The Chinese aren't interested in ideology any more," says Wang. "All we care about is a happy society, tackling unemployment, providing for the impoverished…" China is indeed changing.