BEIJING -- Carl Crook saw his first bomb shelter in 1969 during the madness of the Cultural Revolution.

He was a high-school student in Beijing, but the Red Guards had ordered him to re-educate himself by toiling in a farm-equipment factory. They imprisoned his British father as a suspected spy and placed his Canadian mother under house arrest in Beijing, forbidding her to see her children.

And then, in another spasm of paranoia, Mao Tsetung ordered the masses to "dig tunnels deep" as a shield against Soviet attack.

A vast labyrinth of bomb shelters was swiftly carved out beneath Beijing and thousands of other places, even the farm factory.

Three decades later, the bomb shelters remain, hidden far below the skyscrapers of the booming capital, and still inspected regularly by national security officials.

But entrepreneurs such as Mr. Crook are transforming Mao's underground maze into a symbol of the rampant consumerism of the new free-market era. The bomb shelters are being turned into hotels, nightclubs, markets, shopping malls and restaurants.

Mr. Crook, 53, has become a merchant of fine wines in the city where his parents were once imprisoned. His bottles of Château Lafite-Rothschild and Canadian ice wines are favourites among China's nouveaux riches and emerging middle classes. And he has discovered that the bomb shelters of his youth are a perfect climate-controlled repository for 50,000 of his best bottles.

Across China, more than 3,700 hotels and dormitories and 1,270 shops and restaurants have been created in former bomb shelters, according to an article in Beijing Youth Weekly last year. In Beijing, a youth hostel has been established in a bomb shelter below Wangfujing, the glitziest shopping street in the city. An estimated 20,000 workers are employed in businesses in former bomb shelters in Beijing alone.

Mr. Crook's main shelter, leased from the Beijing government, is concealed beneath a 20-floor apartment tower. He opens a door and climbs down a steep flight of stairs, his voice echoing eerily, past the thick steel doors and whitewashed concrete walls, until he reaches the air-raid shelter, nine metres below the surface. His new warehouse is a rabbit's warren of 28 underground rooms and cubbyholes, each labelled with the country or brand of wine that is stored within.

The bomb shelter is ideal because its temperature never varies from 18 to 20, and it is neither too humid nor too dry. The rent is cheap, and he even has an option to rent the adjoining shelter, connected by a passageway.

In a sense, the metamorphosis to wine cellar from bomb shelter is the story of Communist China itself, and it parallels Mr. Crook's personal journey from Maoist ideals to profitable capitalism.

His parents were devout socialists who settled in China to help build the revolution. His mother was the daughter of Canadian Methodist missionaries in southwestern China. His father was a British Communist and Spanish Civil War veteran. Their son shared their dreams, if not their ideology, during his teenage years in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution.

"There was a euphoric feeling of bringing forward a new society of high ideals of socialism and great concern for internationalism and the Third World," he recalled. "It was an exhilarating time. 'Serve the People' was not just an empty slogan, it was a genuine ideal."

More than 30 years later, "Serve the People" is merely the sardonic name of a chain of Thai restaurants in Beijing, and Mr. Crook worries that Chinese capitalism has become cruder and less humane than that of Western capitalists who were once enemies.

He feels proud, however, that the American-owned company where he is managing director, Montrose Food and Wine, has helped improve the lives of its 150 employees. Their wages are far above the national average.

Many own cars, many have been tourists overseas.

"What has happened to their lifestyle is revolutionary," Mr. Crook said. "It changes their whole outlook on life."

He feels no bitterness over the imprisonment of his parents in the 1960s and early 1970s. "I would feel different if there hadn't been this incredible transformation in China in the past 30 years."

His wine sales in China are rising more than 30 per cent annually, and he expects revenue of about $8.5-million (U.S.) this year. He sells a 1982 vintage of Lafite-Rothschild for about $1,000 a bottle to hotels and restaurants that cater to the new rich. The Chinese are even learning not to mix it with Sprite to improve the taste, as they once preferred to do.

"China has a whole new class of people who are trying to define themselves and their status," Mr. Crook said. "The new middle classes are very anxious about their culture and credentials, and wine is a very good indicator of status."

The wine profits have helped him expand his traditional courtyard home near an ancient canal in Beijing. During the summer he asked a worker to dig an exploratory tunnel beneath the house.

He dug for 20 metres and found nothing, and they were on the verge of abandoning the search. Then he stumbled on something: another bomb shelter from the 1960s. Today it is Mr. Crook's personal wine cellar.