'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

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.