First few days back in Beijing
I always forget the details of travels, even though I always think I am going to remember them.
I have been in Beijing for just about 72 hours. It's my second visit here. I came mostly to spend time with Meiying and also to see friends in the city and get to know it better. I've only spent a week in Beijing and it seems like such an important city and one that deserves more time and attention than I have given it. I'm even giving the Beijing accent a fair shake after years of negative reinforcement from Taiwanese-accented friends.
I'm staying in Dongcheng, the eastern half of the city. I did remember how big the city was, but the reality of it is always different from the memory. The walk from the nearest subway station is about 20 minutes, which is close by Beijing standards. This city feels so big to me that it's easy to believe that many corners could remain unvisited even after years of living here. The streets alternate between giant traffic and bike filled avenues and narrow winding hutongs, the old streets of Beijing which show their age, even the pieces that have been replaced recently. Even the nicer cars parked in the alleys and almost blocking passing traffic begin to somehow fit in with the falling-apart look of each alley.
As I sit in my small, courtyard hotel in Xigongjie Hutong, I can hear the creaks and groans of random machinery trying to keep people warm in the grip of what is apparently a winter to which most here are accustomed, give or take a few degrees. It's a new experience for me having typically traveled only to warm destinations, or at least not wintery ones. My room has four heaters in it and they are all hanging on for dear life. Every visible pipe or patchworked apparatus sticking out of the walls of these old buildings seems to be held together with duct tape or some inexplicable but mostly functional solution someone has pieced together from materials lying around to keep things running just smoothly enough. The same could be said for every decrepit and rusty unlocked bicycle or motor rickshaw that looks as if given a nudge from the right angle might crumble into a pile of spare parts good for nothing.
The big streets admittedly are noisy and just as full of things to gaze at slack-jawed, but I always prefer the hutongs except for maybe very late at night when even though it is probably completely safe especially for a foreigner, it feels too empty and ancient for comfort. Ancient not in the sense that there aren't modern contrivances visible everywhere, but more in the sense that people have been living in alleys like this in some form or another, in many cases in these exact alleys, for way longer than is imaginable in my limited scope of thinking in terms of a lifetime or a generation or two. Even with the newer cars or power lines, it feels as if those things have just been crudely pasted on top of something that runs much deeper and as much as newspapers or pundits in the west like to report about China's changes and what it means for money, money, money, and while that may be true in other neighborhoods of Beijing or Guangzhou or Shanghai where skyscrapers go up at an impossible rate, in these alleys and on the side lanes of the big streets packed with bikes and pedestrians, it just doesn't seem to matter very much to so many people. I proclaim myself not as an expert, just a reporter of what my eyes have seen so far.
People ask me often why I study Chinese or why I love China and I still haven't come up with an answer. I guess my answer remains a work in progress. I intensely dislike the modern materialism, consumerism, and the mimicing of western culture that both goes with and drives those values. That's hardly unique to China of course. I want to believe those things are not as pervasive as one might believe when only looking at the wealthiest people in China and their sports cars and other luxury items. A friend tells me of her uncle who goes into a watch shop and asks to see the most expensive watch they have. Then he buys it and shows it to people so they know he has the most expensive one. That said, I don't feel like I see that sort of behavior regularly. I'm sure it exists, and maybe the people riding all these bikes and cooking dumplings all want those things too, but maybe what I like is the way people accept what they do have rather than pine for what they don't. Maybe I'm just guessing what is in their heads without knowing, but at the very least it seems to me that people are by and large reasonably happy with what they have. To be sure there are a lot of people who need more. I'm not saying nobody needs anything more than what they have here. There are clearly people who do. I'm just saying that people seem more content just living than they do in the US or in other so-called developed countries. In an entirely selfish way, I like my experience in China for allowing me to be endlessly fascinated by every single thing I see to the point where each moment becomes at the very least interesting or stimulating. Maybe that is simply my desire to see and do new things and to increase my understanding through experience. But that said, I think it is largely something in people I meet here that I like, some kind of world view that I can't qualify yet, but that is at least part of the drive I have to continue bringing myself here and part of the answer people seem to be looking for when they ask me this question, though I suppose once again it's a bit of a non-answer, or at least an incomplete one.
Also the food is great.
I have been in Beijing for just about 72 hours. It's my second visit here. I came mostly to spend time with Meiying and also to see friends in the city and get to know it better. I've only spent a week in Beijing and it seems like such an important city and one that deserves more time and attention than I have given it. I'm even giving the Beijing accent a fair shake after years of negative reinforcement from Taiwanese-accented friends.
I'm staying in Dongcheng, the eastern half of the city. I did remember how big the city was, but the reality of it is always different from the memory. The walk from the nearest subway station is about 20 minutes, which is close by Beijing standards. This city feels so big to me that it's easy to believe that many corners could remain unvisited even after years of living here. The streets alternate between giant traffic and bike filled avenues and narrow winding hutongs, the old streets of Beijing which show their age, even the pieces that have been replaced recently. Even the nicer cars parked in the alleys and almost blocking passing traffic begin to somehow fit in with the falling-apart look of each alley.
As I sit in my small, courtyard hotel in Xigongjie Hutong, I can hear the creaks and groans of random machinery trying to keep people warm in the grip of what is apparently a winter to which most here are accustomed, give or take a few degrees. It's a new experience for me having typically traveled only to warm destinations, or at least not wintery ones. My room has four heaters in it and they are all hanging on for dear life. Every visible pipe or patchworked apparatus sticking out of the walls of these old buildings seems to be held together with duct tape or some inexplicable but mostly functional solution someone has pieced together from materials lying around to keep things running just smoothly enough. The same could be said for every decrepit and rusty unlocked bicycle or motor rickshaw that looks as if given a nudge from the right angle might crumble into a pile of spare parts good for nothing.
The big streets admittedly are noisy and just as full of things to gaze at slack-jawed, but I always prefer the hutongs except for maybe very late at night when even though it is probably completely safe especially for a foreigner, it feels too empty and ancient for comfort. Ancient not in the sense that there aren't modern contrivances visible everywhere, but more in the sense that people have been living in alleys like this in some form or another, in many cases in these exact alleys, for way longer than is imaginable in my limited scope of thinking in terms of a lifetime or a generation or two. Even with the newer cars or power lines, it feels as if those things have just been crudely pasted on top of something that runs much deeper and as much as newspapers or pundits in the west like to report about China's changes and what it means for money, money, money, and while that may be true in other neighborhoods of Beijing or Guangzhou or Shanghai where skyscrapers go up at an impossible rate, in these alleys and on the side lanes of the big streets packed with bikes and pedestrians, it just doesn't seem to matter very much to so many people. I proclaim myself not as an expert, just a reporter of what my eyes have seen so far.
People ask me often why I study Chinese or why I love China and I still haven't come up with an answer. I guess my answer remains a work in progress. I intensely dislike the modern materialism, consumerism, and the mimicing of western culture that both goes with and drives those values. That's hardly unique to China of course. I want to believe those things are not as pervasive as one might believe when only looking at the wealthiest people in China and their sports cars and other luxury items. A friend tells me of her uncle who goes into a watch shop and asks to see the most expensive watch they have. Then he buys it and shows it to people so they know he has the most expensive one. That said, I don't feel like I see that sort of behavior regularly. I'm sure it exists, and maybe the people riding all these bikes and cooking dumplings all want those things too, but maybe what I like is the way people accept what they do have rather than pine for what they don't. Maybe I'm just guessing what is in their heads without knowing, but at the very least it seems to me that people are by and large reasonably happy with what they have. To be sure there are a lot of people who need more. I'm not saying nobody needs anything more than what they have here. There are clearly people who do. I'm just saying that people seem more content just living than they do in the US or in other so-called developed countries. In an entirely selfish way, I like my experience in China for allowing me to be endlessly fascinated by every single thing I see to the point where each moment becomes at the very least interesting or stimulating. Maybe that is simply my desire to see and do new things and to increase my understanding through experience. But that said, I think it is largely something in people I meet here that I like, some kind of world view that I can't qualify yet, but that is at least part of the drive I have to continue bringing myself here and part of the answer people seem to be looking for when they ask me this question, though I suppose once again it's a bit of a non-answer, or at least an incomplete one.
Also the food is great.
posted by Dan at 2:11 AM
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