The last regular show at D-22 was on January 10, hosting scores of bands who had clamored for their last chance to perform on the hallowed stage. Love it or hate it, over its six-year existence, D-22 was an important piece in the puzzle of Chinese underground rock. It gave a home to bands who had nowhere else to play, a place to practice and hone their craft in front of an audience. Other Beijing venues have open minds and relaxed booking policies, but D-22 had one important ingredient to set them apart: experience.

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Michael Pettis, the man behind D-22’s curtain, is an economist by day and a rock ‘n’ roll veteran by night. He opened a short-lived venue in New York in the 1980s which gave Sonic Youth a stage when they were starting out. Two decades later in Beijing, he did the same thing for bands like Queen Sea Big Shark, Carsick Cars and Hedgehog, all of whom have now grown into big-name Chinese indie groups and have successfully toured overseas.

Two of those bands signed to the largest label for indie acts, Modern Sky, while Carsick Cars and other big names across genres—PK 14, Demerit, Xiao He, AV Okubo—signed to Maybe Mars, which Pettis and the D-22 crew launched in 2007. With the same open-minded view to accepting artists that made D-22 a place for everyone, the label created a way for bands to get off the D-22 stage and into the wider community.

But the legacy of D-22 isn’t in the bands it helped to bring to the big leagues. From the very beginning, the vision for D-22 was to be an incubator for young bands, and where better to find those bands than in the heart of Beijing’s university district? “We wanted to provide a home for musicians,” co-founder Charles Saliba told us. “Other places were just venues for them to play, there was no support structure or anything in place. And we wanted to build up the audience on the [Chinese] side ... to educate audiences and expose them to good music.”

This attitude, and the ability to lose money hand over fist every night, made D-22 the perfect place to test drive new things. They began hosting more experimental music with their Zoomin’ Nights, which has seen quirky, weird and outright noisy shows from unknown faces to Carsick Cars and Hedgehog side-projects. “I think D-22 is a really open stage,” Zoomin’ Night organizer Zhu Wenbo told to Pangbianr on D-22’s fifth anniversary. “If you like to play experimental music, more weird styles, you’re free to play at Zoomin’ Night.”

Another unsung hero of D-22 is Bei Bei who regularly scoured the surrounding universities to fill D-22’s stage every Wednesday night with local newbies for their weekly University Night series. 2009 Global Battle of the Bands winners Rustic came from that stage, as well as young favorites Mr. Graceless and Birdstriking. “I can’t say all the bands that played Wednesday nights were great,” Pettis admitted to Shanghai rock blogger Andy Best, “but we discovered a lot of talent during those shows, and more importantly a lot of Chinese students learned to hang out in music clubs.”

Which is why, in the end, D-22 had to close. Though 2011 was a successful year, with higher attendance and less money lost on the venture, the club had gotten too big for its boots. The big names of D-22’s history have grown up, and don’t need the help that their childhood home afforded them. Though the last nights of D-22 saw bands throwing themselves at the venue, the attitude of those at the center of the storm had an aura of zen-like acceptance. “D-22 filled a certain niche for a special time in Beijing’s scene,” said Nevin Domer, part of the creative team at Maybe Mars and former D-22 booker. Josh Feola, who handled bookings towards the end, echoed the sentiment: “D-22 accomplished what it was meant to, so now it’s time for something different.”

It remains to be seen what that “something” will be, but wherever the music scene goes from here, it has been undeniably affected by that fire hazard, smoky club in Wudaokou, D-22.