My one-liner assessment of Beijing since being back has been, “Beijing is becoming a giant concrete mall.” In so many more words, the buildings are stumpy, the streets are wide. The wide (and looong) streets don’t help the incessant traffic, nor do they aid the pedestrian. The pedestrian now thrives between mall A and mall Z, but not in the hutongs you’ll find in the newest Karate Kid. No, in fact, Chinese developers were known to have said “I’ll bulldoze the Forbidden City if I could make money. It’s prime real estate.”

My architect friends lamented about this over the weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time that someone has lamented to me about poor urban planning in Beijing. I believe it was a taxi driver back in 2007 who first told me about Liang Sicheng, a famous Chinese architect (and incidentally, Maya Lin’s uncle) who wanted to preserve Old Beijing:

From wikipedia: ….With such a deep respect for tradition and the nation’s cultural heritage, Liang came up with his biggest ambition: preserving Old Beijing in its entirety. Under the Communist government, he was named Vice-Director of the Beijing City Planning Commission. In his early recommendations for transforming Beijing into the new national capital, he insisted that the city should be a political and cultural center, not an industrial zone. He later put forward a proposal that a new administrative center for government buildings with a north-south axis be established west of the Forbidden City, far away from the Inner City. He also advocated that the city walls and gates be preserved. He even published an article entitled “Beijing: a Masterpiece of Urban Planning”, hoping to win the support of the general public. Very regretfully, these dreams of Liang were not realized, ending only in frustration. Despite his best efforts, most of Beijing’s ancient gates and city walls have been torn down, depriving the world of a spectacular example of cultural history.

Liang’s name lives on in China today, but his legacy is more ellipsis than period. It seems to be a common trait of the famous and influential in China — Zhang He, Lin Zexu, Baogong, Deng Xiaoping, Mao — they were giants, and they embodied all that was wrong. Zheng and his treasure fleets, Lin Zexu and his lost Opium war, Baogong the uncorruptable, Deng Xiaoping and his Tiananmen, and Mao, well, and there was Mao. It’s all the flawed men when you simply need a Washington, a Edison, a Jobs.

But no, if history books reflect the truth, Liang Sicheng will be remembered as the man who tried to save us from ourselves, and failed. So it plays on, 5000 and one year later, we are still hellbent on destroying and making, making and destroying. We will not pause. We will not reflect. We will rise and we will fall, and we will rinse and repeat (and our soccer team will still suck). We are not the French, and we are certainly not American. We will keep on building — Great Walls to Great Fire Walls. We will keep on re-writing. We will keep going, and that is all fine and good, and that is all great and well.

Because you see, to me, Beijing is nothing more than a love story. Perhaps we all find that beyond the exteriors of a city, what moves us about a place are the people. So be well guys, be well.

《Tea & Cigarettes | 茶烟道》

If I said coffee and cigarettes, you might conjure up an image of a hip East Village struggling artist type, a world weary fashionista, the movie with an eponymous title, or maybe Rufus Wainwright (to which I would remind you, chocolate milk).

To substitute coffee for tea, you’ll have to change your film reel from New York art-house to…well, actually, who the hell knows where this image of “tea and cigarettes” exists in modern cinema. I’m talking about this image in China specifically, but when the Chinese export films for a foreign audience (shall we say state-sanctioned), it’s often done in beautiful calligraphic strokes–the emperors, the martial artists, the vagabond heroes–one doesn’t see the everyday images of China in Chinese cinema packaged for the west (all right, it’s fine if you go to MoMA and IFC to watch Jia Zhangke, I’m still saying the latter Zhang Yimou and Jackie Chan dominates the Chinese cinema aesthetic). There are no business men with a bit of a belly, holding onto his briefcase in one hand, and shooting rapid mandarin into his cellphone. There are no guys perched at the curb, perfecting their squat while smoking listlessly. Moreover, there are uncles and grandpas gulping down green tea (with thick tea leaves floating like a seaweed bed on the bottom of their water bottle), only to blow all his antioxidant points away with bellows of cigarette smoke.

Health and damage. Health and damage. Welcome to China.

《White Day | 白天》

As for the weather, and inevitable pollution, I asked my brother (cousin really, but like a brother) while tilting my head toward the white sky that fained a little blue at the edges, “is this sky considered blue?” “No,” Wengang quipped back, “this is bai tian (white sky).” In Chinese, white sky is literal for daylight time. Unfortunately these days, most of China have taken that literally. It’s a little eerie. In the environmentally urgent sense, the Chinese are a perfect example of how much humanity can endure while they are slowly being killed off, like frogs slowly being boiled alive. I’ll admit it, the pollution this time is staggering worse than before. The sky darkened yesterday around six at night, and I thought the world was going to end. I was so afraid of the impending acid rain and bellowing wind as I jetted off, sunglass still on not to protect myself from the sun, but the dust dammit. The sun at sunset the day before wasn’t any better–like a sick glowing wound trying to penetrate the smog.

Daddy could not stop bashing northern China’s environment any opportunity he gets. Of course, even in beautiful southern Xiamen, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, they are getting the occasional dust storm from Beijing.

Yep, now that we are done impressing foreigners with our manufactured skies during the Olympics, domestic citizens bite it. But alas, we’re used it, and deep down inside I know I’m just a weak frog pampered by New York’s gorgeous skies (yes, I said gorgeous, GORGEOUS) and ridiculously good tap water.

《Freedom? | 得了吧》

Two footnotes:

1) The woman who sat next to me on the flight from NY to HK worked as a journalist for Sohu. She said, we (Chinese journalists) have always been so jealous of American journalists who can say and write about whatever they want.

2) Went to Xuehai yesterday to stock up on books and magazines, the owner said mainlanders who travel to Hong Kong and Taiwan these days get their luggages checked if they have a lot of books. Any books that are outside of the Communist agenda gets throw out, and only two books are allowed. Additional note: a lot of mainlanders go to Hong Kong/Taiwan to stock up on books that are banned in China, more probably go for the cheaper Louis Vuitton though.

Fuck, Louis Vuitton symbolizes everything that’s wrong with Asia. I really hate LV.

《My Hairdresser | 董桂明》

Of course, I always visit my hairdresser when I come back to Tianjin. Two years later, Dong has a tattoo and is getting married in 10 days. He still works 13 hour days, with only Mondays off. I hate to blemish his character by repeating this part of our conversation:”If you look at the top designers in the world, L’Oreal, Gucci, Louis Vuitton… they are all men. What are women good at? Making babies.”

The whimsical grin he had on almost, almost had me thinking that he was joking, then I remembered myself for all the Chinese men.

《The Game of Love | 非诚无忧》

Saw the most amazing TV show ever. I mean. W.O.W. WOW. Yuan Lai Shi Ni (literally Fately You, a play on words for “it turns out to be you”). The first ten minutes of the show has me aghast, and I mean the American in me gasped at the lack of political correctness, the shallowness, and the incredible lack of human kindness all celebrated by this show. To understand this show, first, some cultural context, Chinese parents still play a major role in their child’s choice of a mate. In modern China, the guiding rule for many women to find a spouse is “he must have a car and a house.” In short, he must be rich.

This show is essentially a “marriage interview” (xiang qin), a traditional Chinese custom somewhere between an arranged marriage and dating that involves the whole family. It’s a lovely show really. One of the more original shows I’ve seen on Chinese TV that doesn’t copy an American one. Indeed, this kind of show can only exist in China.

Twelve mothers and their eligible daughters are introduced to male contestants/possible mates, and in a sequence of video self-introductions, opinions from friends of the dude, they discuss (scathingly rip the guy apart) whether he is an eligible choice. The first guys was a 34-year-old who made a shit-load of money, but was deemed problematic because he was still unmarried at 34. The second guy was a crazy comedian who was “not taking the show seriously enough” with his antics. The third guy was a reasonably good looking guy who “looked like a piece of paper from the side” (he too skinny), and a little weird because he owned a makeup shop. The fourth guy was “much too narcissistic and I hate types like you.”

Many mother-daughter couples have stated their criteria for the daughter’s possible mate. They range from money, ability to assume family responsibility, money, looks and money, a kind person, and money…

So I’m digging myself a hole here when I say after 15 minutes of being shell-shocked, the show really made me think. For a country that many assume the media would be rigid and rehearsed, this is one of the most brutally honest show I’ve ever seen in my life. The people are real, they announce their opinions without any reservations for social kindness. I’ve given the worst of the examples where people were looking for mates with money, but there were also mothers who criticized the man for announcing his high salary in his intro for being too materialistic, and girls who roared they were feminists.

Anyway, this show is staggeringly interesting because the lack of political correctness. I am absolutely impressed by a species of mankind who can withstand constant harsh judgments from society that they are too thin, they are too fat, they are not rich enough, my daughter is far too pretty than you are, and I’m only half sarcastic. The Chinese side of me wonders, if these pre-judgments are how one feels, why bother trying to hide it, or does “hiding it” make up a kinder, more compassionate people?

I know it’s difficult to understand why I think there any salvation in this show, but it’s in the same vain that I appreciate, to an extent, that people tell me I’m “fatter” or “skinnier” than before whenever I come back to China. There is a frankness that exists here about body image and social norms that is at once shallow, and at once light-hearted because if you talk about it, it’s not a big deal anymore.

All in all, let me try to salvage myself by saying that this is a land of opportunity for social change, but Chinese people present a very interesting world view that is…. thought-provoking.

《Love | 爱》

I’m a bit scathing here to China, but I still… love it. The energy here is raw. The people are at once great and off-putting. The food is still whoa good. The potential of opportunities are good. The pressure from the lack of social justice and a fair government is momentum for more change.

I guess this makes me crazy.

Years later, when I became “the daughter from abroad,” I brought home chocolates, fish oil, vitamins, and floss (which no one understood). Today, I bring back organic soap. I bring back organic soap because dammit, China is now a land of commodities and materials, a market flooded with Dove chocolates and microwaves and peanut butter and Lays chips and Pepsi campaigns and “everything foreign shall be embraced.” It is instead me going home to gobble up as much goodies as I can. The food, the snacks, the service, the tennis shoes that I like. Every overseas family seems to have trouble finding things to bring back from America.

And so, soap it is. I’m bringing back soap because everyone needs soap and because it is not ostentatious and ridiculous (Louis Vuitton, for example, a bag that my aunt mistakenly thought they sold in America for $200-300… fuck LV man, and every HKer with an LV. I say this as I plan on buying lots of Shiseido, but I’m for fashion democracy, not mindlessness like what it’s happening in China.). I’m bringing back a little bit of the organic movement where things are handmade instead of on an assembly line. I’m bringing back a mentality that counters China’s mighty army of man-labor, where man is treated as a machine. I’m not sure my relatives will get it. I’m sure I’m being hypocritical as I plan on going to a fancy hair salon that will cost me half the price in the US because labor is cheap.

BUT.

Soap is sure as hell healthier than chocolate.

A new school year means military training for the college freshmen, where guerrilla green run flocks like a moving forest. Kids go for 10 days, as opposed to 20 years ago, when daddy apparently led a three month summer training. Still, by the end of the 10 days, everyone is dark as charcoal.

bye bye dear

“These days, Chinese people are probably the hardest working bunch on the planet. Our white collar workers have it bad. Our farmers also have it bad.” She talked about a friend in Shanghai who pulled insane hours working in finance, who bought Gucci, Versace, and Givenchy to build a closet of “happiness.”

We were strolling through a park in the middle of Beijing. It’s the type of park that you can only find in cities —a horizontal strip of concrete incorporated modern art—with silver half spheres sprouting from the ground—as an area of benches. Young lovers talked intimately and text messaged furiously. Old lovers walked their dog—usually in the tiny, cute variety—together. Some non-lovers were sprawled out on the benches, taking a much needed nap after a long day. Every few while, there would be a gathering of old people singing and dancing. Classic Soviet folk songs faded and became Canto-love songs, Canto-love songs dipped low and become a memory. For a moment, it was hard to believe that this could be one of the hardest working country in the world, what with all the time the dancers and singers at the parks seems to have.

Okay, clearly, I need to retire here. I confessed to Xiao Man, and she laughed, and like a good tour guide that she was, pointed to the trees around us: “Beijing’s gotten so much greener in the past seven years I’ve been here,” and waved at the strip of Hutong that now housed the hippest coffee shops and bars, “this place used to be residential Beijing, you know, old Beijing, if you could have gotten coffees, they’d probably be 3 yuan, instead of the ridiculous 30 yuan foreigner prices now.”

Hey Xiao Man, I asked. What’s the toughest question foreigners ask you in China? “Tough… I don’t know. In Tiananmen Square, they would always ask about June 4th. Without fail.” What do you say? Are they critical? “Yes, of course, and I tell them, I’m not qualified to answer that. I haven’t lived it. It’s too complicated of a problem. We’re here to have fun. No need to put a damper on things with politics.” Do they press you on? “Sometimes. Then I tell them, that tank stopped in front of that kid, not run him over. Then I ask them, do you know the name of our president? No? Well… then on what grounds do we have to talk about this? That usually ends the conversation pretty well.” Xiao Man asked me about western media. How do they really portray China? Is it bad? Is it fair? I don’t know. I told her. The west tends to report on negative stuff in China, but maybe for the equilibrium of things. One CCTV might just be enough, maybe it was for best. “I’m going to go someday and find out myself. I introduce China to foreigners all the time, but I don’t know what environment they grew up in, come from. I want to know,” she said.

We paid 39 yuan (approx $5) for foot massages mostly because we wanted to catch one of the last competitions where China is competing in—the 10 meter platform diving. Only in China could I get massages without feeling guilty for my pocket. Only in China do I feel guilty for getting massages. That night China “lost” her 50th gold. We shrugged on. It’s okay. 48 medals is nice because of the auspicious eight. 50 is nice because it’s round and even and easy. Now 49, 49 you remember. 49 is 7×7. 49 is perfect. Footnote: and then a day later I find we’re at 51. Go figure. I have nothing to say for 51. Haha.

To be honest though, the park was a bit of strange experience, a hybrid of commercialization, mediocre sculptures, and one of the biggest McDonald’s I’ve ever seen. We spent the morning visiting a bunch of exhibitions: China Mobile, Johnson&Johnson, Volkswagon, GE, and apparently Coca-Cola has a sweet exhibition but lines are mile long. The day that people start lining up to watch commercials and sweet waterfalls that spell out things like “WIND WATER FIRE METAL EARTH…. GE.” It’s pretty ridiculous. In fact, I don’t know how I feel about this at all.

All in all

to be very honest

I think I may have overdosed on the Olympics

Rong

GE building

That is, GE is imagination

The GE watercube

The FUWA parade

Rain on my parade… ICE ICE baby

Fire baby

Yep, those are plates they are spinning.

Shield me from the sun…

Little nests… big nests…

To be frank, the Bird Nest is quite the monstrosity up close and personal.

If you are ever in Beijing and have editors on your tail / need a good chill spot for inspiration, break a buck 25 at Nanluoguxiang, a strip of Hutong near Houhai. It’s old Beijing meets western salon, and the result is better than you can hope to be.

breathe in, stay still.

I took five and sat down with Wang Gang, a member of the Beijing Organizing Committee for a snapshot of his Olympic life.

What’s your job title?

I’m a staff member of BOCOG (The Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad).

What do you do?

On site Chinese commentating. My sports for the Beijing Olympics include track, cycling, BMX, and mountain biking. Mostly, I do consecutive translation of what the English announcer is saying.

Consecutive translation? That’s pretty impressive.

It’s actually not that hard. It’s easy when you are familiar with the sports jargon. It would be hard if I was translating a speech by an economist.

How did you get the gig?
Me and most of my CUC (Communication University of China) classmates all applied for something to do during the Olympics. I sent in my application, went through an interview process, and was picked from thousands to be a commentator. Most of my classmates were selected as announcers, which means they do the intro before every event like “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the XXIX Olympiad… etc. etc.” or “Today the weather is fine, a nice 29 degrees.”

What did you have to do to prepare for your job?
Just the other day I went in to do a BMX game simulation. Which basically means we screen previous games and do voice over commentating over it.

(At this point, Wang Gang was mixing in a lot of English with his Chinese)
Do you realize you speak with an English accent? How did your English get so good?
Trainspotting is my favorite movie. A very memorable, very impressive movie. I guess I watch a lot of English movies. I like Jude Law’s accent a lot also and try to emulate it. I’m good enough to do commentating in both English and Chinese. It’s actually my dream to become a sports commentator abroad one day. NBA, here I come.

…So, are you a volunteer?
No, not at all. I’m a step above those guys. Paid employee here. I get paid about 80 RMB (about 10 dollars) a day. Enough to get me a pair of new shoes okay? I also enjoy free transportation. Basically, what I’m trying to say is, the Chinese Olympics Committee is shitting on the sweat and blood of energetic youth. It’s great.

Describe your average day for us.
Normally, we have to be at the office before 8:00 am and check out by 7:00 pm. I spend a lot of time on PSP, chatting, taking sitting naps. It’s the rule for us to check in everyday though. During competition, of course, it gets busy. Also, the other day I had to pick up an English commentator 4:00 in the morning at the airport. Somebody bought a cheap ticket. So yeah, catering to the needs of foreign announcers and commentators is also part of the job description.

/Wang Gang, August 14, 2008 

Bird no more.

“Xiang” means flight in Chinese. For hurdler Liu Xiang, who graces everything from Coke cans, Nike spots, Lenovo brochures, China Mobile phone cards, milk ads, and to, well, door handles, his fall from grace may be harder for his advertisers than the average Chinese. Never mind sob articles in the Times that has an entire nation in mourning. Nobody crumbled in tears on the bus I was on while watching him walk off the race, and when I asked my father about it an hour later, “Did you see it?” He replied rather indignantly, “What? On TV? Of course not! Who has time for TV?”

All in all, there are still 1.3 billion people ready and willing to trade heels with him if need be. Go China.