Beijing on the Move

Greetings from Beijing!

The Great Firewall allows me to post to, but not to read, our blog from here.

Beijing has changed quite a bit. I don’t mean from my first visit in 1971, but just from a few years ago.

• You have to resort to the Grand Hyatt’s Made In China instead of the traditional Quanjude for the best Peking duck.
• You can sip Starbucks coffee almost from anywhere instead of just from the more popular malls.
• You don’t have to cover your nose going to a public toilet. Indeed most of the public toilets, including those in the hutongs, are pretty decent.
• You can see movies like the Da Vinci Code (at least for two weeks)
• You can enjoy some nicely restored heritage sites, like the Yonghe Gong (which I just visited today with an interesting narration from the audio guide)
• You have to allow much more time to get around as most of the roads are clogged by the ever-increasing number of private cars.
• You can be practiced upon by the taxi drivers for their mandatory English required by the Olympic games in 2008.
• You can see a lot more pensioners. I was drafting this post outside a school for the aged in Guozijian Road with its octogenarian orchestra ceaselessly practicing some Peking opera tunes.

But Beijing is always a great city to visit with its thousand year history of successes and failures, rights and wrongs, culture and anti-culture. You will never fail to find changes here in spite of its seeming perpetuality.

Photos by courtesy of Robin Kwong