China Journal

China Journal

Beijing is a product today of three essential elements, the “earth, wind, and fire” of the times.

First, there are the people, 25 million of them, and Beijing is not the largest city in China. The physical city is huge, but I’m not talking about “greater Beijing” the way we talk about the “tri-state area” around New  York City (New York proper has about eight million people). You wonder how the ground can support the weight of so many millions and their infrastructure.

Second, there is the air. You can smell it and taste it, a combination of saltiness and the iron filings odor you often detect in subways from endless wheels abrading on fixed tracks. You can see it at night and during the day, and it’s hard to breathe deeply. It is a result of millions of tons of hydrocarbons from vehicles, industrial waste, dust blowing all over, and 25 million people living together. Think of Los Angeles on the worst day you’ve ever seen it, and then multiply by ten. (Smoking is quite common, including in most restaurants, and in most cabs by the drivers.)

Third, there is a grim repression. People are efficient and usually polite, but the only word that defines the zeitgeist is “resigned.” This is a totalitarian system, despite its embrace of capitalism, and people are afraid and pessimistic. The state is everywhere. The one-child allowance is now being eased because so much of the population is aged and young people are need for the labor and taxes to support them.

This combination of masses of humanity, a polluted environment, and classic Big Brother does not result is a joyous or enlightened population. It results in routine, resignation, and dullness. There is full employment in the sense of over-employment—five hostesses in a restaurant, so many street cleaners that you can’t find a dead leaf on the streets. But none of them smile. Many people seem to hate their jobs.

As we walked around Tiananmen Square we were in the midst of thousands of military and police. Riot shields and batons were visible in transparent kiosks. And I couldn’t imagine how many undercover security people were posed as tourists or venders. At the National Museum of Art, two dozen security people, identically dressed in black para-military outfits, methodically and mechanically dealt with each visitor and, when not busy, stood at parade rest staring straight ahead. (Imagine this in the TSA.)

Everyone pushes, not out of malice, but because breaking into lines and pushing forward is simply done as readily as changing traffic lanes in Rhode Island without signalling. It’s not proper, but no one is going to do much. And everyone smells, of sweat, bad breath, hair oil, secretions, and no use for deodorant. The crowds are often, literally, breathtaking.

Only about one in twenty people wear masks, by my rough count. Even those perpetually in the streets, such as police, bus drivers, and mail people don’t wear them.

It’s not unusual to walk down any street in New York and find people talking animatedly and laughing. You see it occasionally here with foreigners, but rarely with locals.

The disparity in wealth is staggering. There may be two major Versace stores in New York, but we saw four without trying hard in Beijing. There are clusters of Cartier, Bulgari, Brioni, Chanel, Gucci, Mercedes, Hermés, and so forth. There was a Ferrari showroom across from our hotel. The hotel had more luxury stores in two lower lobbies than our hotel in Monaco last year. Bear in mind that my Bentley would cost about $1 million US dollars in Beijing, and we saw two of them and two Rolls just in casual observation. Very fashionably, expensively dressed women are in the best restaurants and depart later in Range Rovers and Audis. But they aren’t smiling, either.

What you also detect in the air is the stifling feeling of lack of promise, of little hope for change, of repressed sentiments, of rigid routine. That, too, is hard to breathe.

I’m glad to have been there in person, and seeing the Great Wall about an hour away was awesome. It’s simply astounding that a culture that could build that wall two millennia ago can’t build or demand a healthy, stimulating society today.

© Alan Weiss 2013