I frequently feel in Beijing that I’m living in two very disparate places. Admittedly, I foster that feeling, but the city itself is mostly responsible for this. Interspersed within the high-rises and multi-million dollar office towers are pockets of old Beijing. Decaying, single-floored brick buildings that may be twenty, fifty, or a hundred years old huddle in the shadows of these young giants. Age and continued use frequently give them more character than the buildings that surround and dwarf them.
Somewhat out of necessity, but also out of curiosity, I find myself drawn to both the old and the new Beijing, the daily life in the
hutongs and the swank events around the city. Most often, it’s obvious I don’t fit in. In the back alleys, not only am I a foreigner, but relatively filthy rich. At high-class events around the city, my middle-class background shows through. I don’t like champagne. I hold my wine glass incorrectly. I’m oblivious to the fact that I just casually chatted with some celebrity. I don’t truly fit in anywhere because I’m a middle-class outsider, and there’s no true middle class here.
Old BeijingYesterday, I took my scooter for repairs at
a garage sandwiched between a widening street and train tracks in the fast-growing
Bai zi wan area. Its continued existence in that neighborhood is probably a side-effect of the fact that the narrow strip of land it’s on isn’t developable.
As I entered, hesitantly, I saw a taxi cab having its tires replaced, or maybe rotated, on the left. On the right, motorcycles, scooters, and motorized bicycles haphazardly queued up for repairs. People meandered about or welded something to something else, or looked on as someone else made repairs. Many of them wore grease-stained clothes and had fresh grease on their hands. I had no idea who to talk to. Everyone I saw was potentially a customer or a mechanic.
The ground was uneven, sloping at strange angles to itself, and covered in a few layers of grime. The rear wall of the garage was a squat, brick building that housed a tiny convenience store and what appeared to be the storehouse for the repair shop; shelves full of spare parts, possibly second hand, mostly covered in dust. The garage itself was an awning held aloft by a line of trees and steel tubes welded together in a skeleton. The steel tube is in the very center was too short, and so was propped up by two bricks. A scooter, much smaller than mine, sat in a corner and appeared to have been sitting there for an eternity. The front half of it was held to the back half with a misshapen board with a nut/bolt set through each corner.
The boss stepped out of the store room and greeted me. He was not at all grease-covered, and looked incredibly like an aged
Zhou Enlai (on the left in the photo). He had his posture, his eyebrows, and smile. He had his hat, and a matching coat. His mannerisms were as I’ve always imagined Zhou’s mannerisms to have been. I don't think that the original Zhou Enlai had gold teeth, but this one did. As far as I can tell, besides the grill, he had no other bling.
Zhou Enlai asked me to show him what was wrong with my bike. I did. He got a fifteen year old boy to start working on it.
A drunken man pulled up on his motor-trike. He had a big furry hat that stereotypes of Russians wear in Siberia. A cloud of alcohol scent surrounded him. He asked where I was from, then insisted on speaking Russian to me. I, and the others, repeatedly told him that I couldn’t understand Russian, let alone his drunken Mandarin. He wanted his biked fixed before they fixed mine. I don’t know if it was out of politeness to me, or in the interested of keeping this wildly drunk guy off of the road for a while, but they refused and continued working on mine.
The drunk starting making me uncomfortable when he mimed rubbing his oily hands on my coat. Fortunately, a young
Deng Xiaoping came to my rescue. He was, I figured out after a while, a customer, and didn’t work with Zhou Enlai at all. Deng talked to me at great length, and made me feel as though my Mandarin ability was novice at best. I’m not even clear exactly what the subject was. He enjoyed the conversation, though.
After two hours of watching the15-year-old try to repair my bike, it was clear that the repairs would be done any time soon. I asked if I could come back tomorrow. The boy said “Sure,” with what was obviously a sigh of relief. I think I was getting special treatment as the foreign guest, and the boy thought he had to rush to get the work done.
“We’ll be open at 8am tomorrow,” he said.
“I have something to do in the morning,” I lied, “I’ll be by in the afternoon. Maybe about this time.”
New Beijing
An hour later, I was on my way to the
Chocojing party. I didn't know what they were, but the invite intrigued me, so I went. The event was held at a place called Luna, or Luce. It's hard to tell. I found the address in That's Beijing under the name Luna, but the sign on the door said "Luce." I have my suspicions that Luce is the restaurant part, and Luna is the lounge part.
Anyhow, it was everything that these swank, in-a-traditional-house-in-a-hutong- but-redecorated-with-a-lot-of-funiture-that-might-be-european places are supposed to be. Subdued lighting, mostly white patrons, and music that is supposed to be cool partially because no one can name the artists. Having said, that, it was quite enjoyable and some of the chocolate fabulous. The entrance fee was a fair 50 kuai, which included the chocolate and chocolate martinis. Well worth the cost.
There was an AmCham dinner going on at the same time, and many of the AmCham people overflowed into the Chocojing thing. Some of the AmCham people were wearing shoes that cost much much more than my scooter, and I can't help but wonder if they'd ever set foot in a place like the repair shop I was in just hours ago.
I mingled, met some interesting people, had a great time. I met people, both foreign and Chinese, who have spent more money on airfare than some of the people I met at the repair shop will make in their entire lifetime. I made the mistake of notice only the
chocolate part of the chocolate martinis, and missed the
martini part until it was too late.
The host of Chocojing, a few of the guests, and I continued on to two other parties. We left the first rather quickly. It was held at Bed, and the atmosphere was, well... incongruous with our mood. One of our friends remarked that it 'felt like we're supposed to sprawl out on the couch and smoke weed.' The party immediately after that was a beach party held in someone's apartment. There were quite a few guests, including a smidgen of guys in shorts and Hawaiian shirts and a girl in a bikini. Most of the guests seemed unwilling to wear less than their Beijing winter attire. I'm still not certain who the host of that party was, but thank you for (and sorry about) the half-bottle of gin.
We moved on to a bar or two after the parties. Eventually, I ended up at The Saddle, where I ran into someone from the Chocojing party. Though the details never entered my long term memory, thank you for the conversation.
Real BeijingThis afternoon, hangover in retreat, I returned to the repair shop. It was as if the whole place was on pause while I was gone. The 15-year-old still had my bike in various pieces scattered about. He was frantically unscrewing bolts and stripping wires, and insisting that the turn signals never worked in the first place. It was another hour and a half before my bike was ready to go.
After all that work, the repairs we 5 kuai less than the small burrito I ate at The Saddle. 30 kuai for both the parts and labor. I cannot imagine how they can run that shop when that much work amounts to 30 kuai.
They wished me a happy Spring Festival, and I drove away. I got as far as the street when the engine died. After another half hour of repairs, they'd asked if I had anything important to do and whether I was in a hurry. I told them I'd leave the bike with them another night, and come back tomorrow afternoon.
A lot of foreigners in Beijing can be overheard expressing their anger over how quickly the 'old' Beijing is being destroyed. Of course, most of these people live in the high-rises that they hate so much. Some of them live in modernized, converted
siheyuan, but none of them live in the 'old' Beijing that is being unceremoniously replaced.
Don't get me wrong, I miss it, too. I remember when Beijing was a few skyscrapers surrounded by millions of small apartment complexes and traditional buildings. Now it's hundreds of skyscrapers, thousands of apartment complexes and pockets of traditional housing.
What I mean to question is this: has this ever happened in Beijing's past? Has the general feeling ever been "these newcomers are ruining our city with all this newfangled crap?" It's not as if Beijing has never seen upheaval and change before.
Labels: Beijing Adventures, Drinks
