Uniquely Beijing...

Beijing is a city that is literally morphing and transforming right before your eyes. There is palpable sense of excitement and energy in the air. In general, people are optimistic - their incomes are higher than ever before, given them a new spending power that they could not even dream of in the past. Consumerism is very much part of the "new" culture - the Chinese love to buy and spend. The whole concept of Chinese being avid savers may seriously end with this new generation of "little emperors." Many only children live at home, spend all that they make, and then take money from their parents. At least in the cities, the younger generation is pretty open and liberal. They don't sell tampons or pads in the women's bathrooms at restaurants, but they'll sell condoms. It's rather bizarre.

And everywhere you look, there is construction (the Central Business District is expanding by 50% according to someone here). Along with that comes the destruction of old hutongs. One day, the hutong across the street from my apartment was there. Then suddenly, these flags bearing propaganda about the Olympics and the good of the people (or something like that... my Chinese is a bit rusty) went up and the next thing I knew, the hutongs were gone. No doubt, they have been razed to make way for new modern residential towers much like the ones I live in right now. Office towers and residential buildings are popping up all over the place. I wonder where the local displaced people have been forced to move... there are already 6 rings in the city and the 6th ring is really far away and the public transportation is really terrible...

But even the destruction of the hutongs happened in typical Chinese fashion. Labor is just so ridiculously cheap (for example, our "ayi" or housekeeper gets 15RMB an hour... about $2USD. That's including the 50% premium we give her because she's fantastic and I have issues paying someone 10RMB an hour), that no machines were involved. Little men with picks and hammers stood on the roof of these buildings and knocked them down using brute force. For those of you that don't believe this, I have pictures to prove it. It was a bit disconcerting. Worker's safety is also not an issue. There are no laws protecting these people. Lives are pretty much considered expendable here which is sad.

I went to an interesting talk on the development of Modern Dance in China. The speaker implied that the government's recent embrace of modern dance (once considered a corrupting Western influence to be avoided at all cost) was a result of events such like the pending Olympics, which has really driven them to adopt things considered modern and new and reject the old. So out goes hutongs and in comes modern dance and modern buildings. However, I hope that they find some happy medium between 5,000 years of history and modernity. While they are preserving and restoring the main historic sites, there are a lot of other smaller things that deserve protection. China is still very much looking for an identity and hopefully they will find it soon.

Another crazy thing: the government doesn't really think twice about inconveniencing people. They've shut down Dongzhimen subway station, the station near where I live, which may be the busiest subway stop in the city. There are a few additional buses, but you think they'd try to find a better solution that closing an entire stop for 6 weeks. They're building a bunch of new subway lines (which is absolutely necessary!) but the construction is blocking off a couple of lanes on several major streets so traffic has been atrocious. 1,000 new cars are added to the roads everyday. There's no way that can continue. The pollution and air quality is terrible so expansion of public transportation will be really important.

I still haven't made it to any of the hutongs yet. I should do that before more of them disappear.