First explorations, Beijing

Yesterday I managed to get out of our conference hotel here on Jianguo Men
Nei Da Jie [that’s a street name], for a couple of great, if short, excursions.

At lunchtime, I walked with a colleague for two kilometers along this big
boulevard, past massive glossy new shopping malls, hotels, other huge edifices,
until we arrived at Tienanmen Square. The Israeli President is visiting,
so all the large red flags waving outside the Tienanmen Gate to the Forbidden
City were twinned with equally large Israeli flags. (Photo of me in
front of flags to be posted later, I hope.)

Anyway, it was a great walk through what is clearly a busy and rapidly developing
major world metropolis. There are about six or eight lanes of busy traffic
on these big boulevards, flanked on each side by broad bike-ways and
even broader, tree-shaded sidewalks. Everything was immaculately clean
and well-swept, and the sidewalks had a very healthy and lively bustle. There’s
a subway line runs under the street, and around the two or three stations
we passed were clustered hundreds of parked bikes.

Most people seemed dressed warmly in adequate, fairly simply-styled clothing.
Around some of the glitzy indoor shopping malls (Aramani, Ferragami,
all those high-end names) people were dressed, not surprisingly, in a far
more glitzy fashion.

We went into one fabulous, six-story bookstore that had vast halls of brightly-colored
books. My colleague, Andrew Vincent, was looking for a certain English-language
book about Old Beijing. I was looking for the Internet cafe that Andrew’s
Lonely Planet guide had promised us would be on the 6th floor of the bookstore.
In the “foreign language” department on the fourth floor, not far fromwhere
the escalator dropped us, Andrew found his book as if by magic. I,
alas, did not find the Internet cafe. But a cashier on the 6th floor
who spoke great Englishspent some time very courteously giving me precise
instructions as to where I could find one nearby.

We also walked some way into the Forbidden City complex. The most interesting
parts all have access only with tickets, which we didn’t have time to get.
But the parts we were able to visit were already architecturally stunning–
and made much more interesting by the hordes of Chinese visitors there with
us who were clearly enjoying themselves there on this sunny but very cold
day. There was one little roped-off area where visiting tourists could
dress up in traditional Chinese court dress and have the photos taken against
the backdrop of the massive red structures overlooking the courtyard. Scores
of other people stood around the ropes looking in and laughing at all the
fun…

In the evening, Andrew and I set out with three other non-Chinese colleagues
from the conference for a dinner outing that had been hastily organized for
us by Kamal Hossein, one of the colleagues who is a former Foreign Minister
of Bangladesh who has also, over the years, spent various lengths of time
here in China on various UN-related missions. As we bowled aloing the
darkened streets in two taxis looking for the restairant where he had the
reservation, he talked a little about his first time here– as part of a
UN technical-assistance mission that came in 1980 to help China re-establish
the legal system that had been just about completely dismantled by the ravages
of the Cultural Revolution.

Well, we had a long time to talk, because the drivers of the two taxis we
were in were having a terrible time finding our destination. As a result,
we drove along many different kinds of streets (some of them two or three
times!) Actually, I say above that the streets were “darkened”; but
in fact, some of them were and some of them weren’t. Some still seemed
fairly lively with foot traffic at around 8 p.m. And then, every so
often we’d pass a huge, multi-level restaurant all hung with the ubiquitous
red lanterns and full of people enjoying fine meals. (I was quite hungry
by then, having eaten almost nothing for lunch.) But we didn’t just
stop at any of those restaurants and eat there. Instead, at some, our
drivers would get out and consult with the doorman about the handwritten
directions that Kamal had been able to get someone to write out for them,
to the place we were headed: the “Red Capitalists’ Club” (no kidding!)

Personally, I felt totally stupid there, with not one of us being able to
say a single word of Chinese to the drivers, and leaving them to solve this
entire problem.

After about the fifth or sixth kerbside consultation, and after many hair-raising
U-turns undertaken across busy highways, the lead driver suddenly plunged
into one of the little “hutongs” (back alleys) that still criss-cross much
of the city. Okay, correction here, according to Lonely Planet they
all run east-west so that the houses on them can get the right south-facing
fen shui. So maybe “criss-cross” is not quite the right word. Some
of the hutongs are very short. The one we dove into seemed long: the
drivers proceeded about quarter of a mile or more along an unlit, unkempt
little alley before coming to a halt before one looming stone entrance lit
by a single red lantern. We just had width in the alley to open the
car doors, and we piled out gratefully.

The drivers started mentioning something–no doubt, the fare. Luckily
an elegantlyt dressed woman walking by spoke English. “They want 25
yuan,” she told us, and we (actually, Kamal) paid up gratefully.

We ducked our heads to go in the arched entrance-way and found ourselves
in a dimly-lit vestibule. An English-speaking doorman of some sort
materialized and confirmed that yes, we’d come to the right place. He
led us through an ill-lit courtyard into a large room with a beautiful
vaulted wood ceiling. There were only a couple of other parties dining
that night. A young woman dressed as a Red Guard brought our menus.
Frankly, by that time the evening had already had so many puzzles in
it that I didn’t immediately click to the incongruity of that. But
it was, in fact, just a part of a whole aura of Mao-era chic that is
part of the themse of this particular place.

There were only two menus (expensive, and even more expensive), but the food
was good. It was served by four young women all speaking fairly good
English. Only one was in the Red Guard outfit. The others wore
bright red quilted jackets.

“Red Capitalist” is, it turns out, a brand that is also manifested in the
nearby “Red Capital Residence”. As we were told in many lengthy pages
in the “menu”– only one page of which actually featured the food– the term
refers to that small number of key Chinese capitalists who decided soon after
1949 to work with the Maoist revolution. It also seems to refer to
the post-Independence period of Mao’s life when he started to enjoy the capitalist-style
perquisites of national office. A brochure for the “Red Capital residence”
cites Edgar Snow as having written: “Twenty-four years ago I first met Mao
Tse-tung in a cave dug into the hills of the province of Shensi, within the
great bend of the Yellow River… ” But it also shows a grainy picture
of Mao standing in a nice-looking courtyard along with Zhou Enlai and a couple
of people who may or may not have been Red capitalists.

Anyway, the Mao theme(brand?) still seems very much alive in many parts of
the city. I can’t tell whether it is used/displayed by people as some
kind of a reaffirmation of Chinese liberationist values even amidst all the
crass, anti-Marxist commercialism of today; or, as some kind of mindless
but still fairly affectionate “chic”; or in some more deeply ironic way as
an embrace of Mao imagery as kitsch… Maybe some combination
of all three…

Anyway, I’m finishing writing this little preliminary description of Beijing
on Thursday afternoon, Beijing time. Our conference is now completely
over. Soon, I’m going to go back to the Forbidden City. Then
tomorrow do a whole bunch more sightseeing.

I should report from the conference that this morning, we had a sort of elongated
public round-table discussion with some Chinese experts on Middle East affairs.
Hearing the views they expressed was quite interesting. Maybe
in a later post I’ll be able to write something about that.