Modern Beijing

Despite all the talk in the West about how much China has changed in the last 10-15 years, it’s difficult to truly fathom how much change has truly occurred. The pace of change is truly remarkable, and I guess you could say I have seen it first-hand, which sometimes I find hard to believe. I never guessed that I would watch a country change so much in such a short time.

I first came to Beijing China in 1997, as part of the Carleton Beijing Program. At the time, there were still more bicycles than cars, you regularly saw mule/horse-drawn carts on major streets, and the fourth-ring road (Si Huan Lu) was not built yet. The colors I remember from that time are mostly grey and brown, broken only on rainy days when all of the bicyclists in Beijing would magically break out these neon-colored rain tarps to ride down the street. We lived on the outskirts of Beijing, north of the third-ring road (San Huan Lu) and could see farmland from our windows at the University of International Business and Economics. There was a large dirt track north of us that we heard might become a new ring road. We ate at mom and pop places in holes-in-the-wall locations, and when we heard that the first Dunkin’ Doughnuts was opening in Beijing probably ten of our group went on an epic bus and walking trek downtown to taste the first coffee we had had in 2 months.

Now things have changed. I came back to Beijing about six years later, in August 2003, right after SARS shut the whole country down for several months. I was here for two weeks, and must have visited every park within walking distance of the St. Regis hotel on Jianguomen Dajie. And I walked it all, seeing the differences everywhere and becoming astonished at what change had wrought in six years.

I have been coming back 2-3 times a year ever since. I have seen streets that existed disappear, buildings spring up into huge towers, and whole neighborhoods leveled for shopping malls and apartment towers. Huge hutong neighborhoods (one story courtyard house groups built in the Chinese imperial era) have either been leveled or “restored” to two-story lavish homes or boutique hotels north of the Forbidden City. There’s now a Starbucks pretty much everywhere. The fourth and fifth ring roads have been built, and I’m currently living in a 20-story apartment building surrounded by other such buildings and hotels between the third and fourth ring roads close to the Summer Palace. As I recall, 10 years ago the Summer Palace was basically in the countryside.

I wish I had electronic copies of the pictures I took 10 years ago for a true comparison, somehow I think even I would be astonished to compare them to what I see every day here. The contrast truly hit me this evening when I went out to have Indian food with some friends at a place that they jokingly called the Arlington Commons of Beijing. There was a Zara, a Starbucks, a Guess store, an international food court…and oh yes, the biggest darn TV screen I’ve ever seen:

Oh, and 10 years ago some of us went to a nightclub called the “PLA Club,” which yes, did stand for the People’s Liberation Army. Western women got in free, and there were cage dancers. This is what the location looks like now:

In the end I don’t know what all of this means. I think I just needed to get it all down on paper (or the internet I guess) how remarkable the changes I’ve seen really are. In the end I feel privileged to have seen such rapid change in a city that I truly find fascinating in all its aspects, and am impressed at how quickly the standard of living has rocketed skyward here. However, there is a sort of sadness for the type of life that has been lost: the slow methodical pace of riding a bike down the large, crowded, bike lanes of Beijing (no one ever went faster than anyone else you see…), has been replaced by millions of cars, taxis, and tour buses. But in the end, who can ever truly say whether such massive changes are ultimately good or bad…only history can tell, and 30 years from now when I read that history book, I can say I was here to see it happen, which is astounding and humbling all at the same time.