Beijing revolves around its streets. The third world capital is basically a conglomeration of plastic, metal, concrete and people, all haphazardly arranged along the meandering lines of its passageways. These streets represent the gamut of the imperial city’s historical and social development, from winding, jagged alleys separating the traditional one-story hutong houses to the sprawling concourses that coil around the city center, sheathed in dust and carbon monoxide.

The structure of Beijing centers on four central streets, un-creatively named the First, Second, Third and Fourth Ring Roads. The roads form concentric circles from the capital’s densely populated navel to the sprawling suburbs on the outskirts of town. The rings radiate out of a cluster of commercial zones, government buildings and museums.

Gu Gong, The Forbidden City, rests at the heart of this area, cloistered in its faded elegance, shielded by century-old brick walls from the traffic and noise outside. On a July day, the broad, sunny smiles of white tourists float around the vast stone platforms and gold-encrusted rooftops. Small stands selling overpriced bottles of cold green tea and cheap plastic Qing Dynasty trinkets reveal a new China. The need for market stands is driven by demand, supply, and the innate Oriental entrepreneurial spirit liberated in the 1980s from Communist rule. In one section of Gu Gong’s labyrinth of cement and vermilion pillars and grimacing marble dragons, groups of Chinese youngsters, perhaps off-duty guards, play basketball—one of many non-sequiturs that pepper the urban landscape.

Once outside the boundaries of The Forbidden City, the cacophony of Beijing thrusts you back into modernity.

The contemporary and the traditional coexist awkwardly in the central districts of the city. One afternoon, I found a contemporary art gallery nestled on the rooftop of a gigantic imperial fortress. The staid gray edifice, which must have once towered over the city, was now divided between a hip gallery and a chintzy gift shop, and vied with the crisscrossing highways and bridges for the soiled Beijing sky. I walked through the gallery with a camera hanging from my clammy neck, seeking a frame for this odd clash of disparate urbanities. I snapped a photograph of workers perched high on a scaffold, the scorching rays of light blooming over their tattered silhouettes. Just inside the Qing-Dynasty doorway that they were repairing, a small ensemble of abstract sculptures stood—dwarfed, colorless human forms made of twisted wire. I put the camera away when the workers began to eye me with bitter curiosity.

If you walk along the flow of traffic in the urban center, you will eventually find yourself in Tiananmen Square, which lies just south of the old imperial city, adjacent to a huge pair of McDonalds arches. Cars are not allowed to stop here, evoking a feeling that the square is a self-contained cement organ around which the blood of the city flows. Here, groups of uniformed PLA soldiers in neatly pressed green uniforms stride in unison among the Westerners. They appear too prim to evoke the images of Tiananmen plastered on television screens thirteen years ago. At dusk and dawn, tourists gather around a giant metal pole to see the raising and lowering of the red flag, while Chairman Mao’s colossal portrait smiles placidly over his rapidly Westernizing domain. Traffic streams by just under his dimpled chin.

Not too far from Tiananmen is Wangfujing, a glittering pedestrian commercial walkway featuring manicured gardens, towering shopping centers and cute stands that sell cups of pearl milk tea and ice cream. One of the more recent totems of this street is an enormous reverse bungee cord ride, catapulting screaming groups of three or four into the air from the sidewalk.

In the nearby Chaoyang district, home to foreign embassies and the Worker’s Stadium, the place to be is Sanlitun. It’s is a narrow street where viscous clumps of taxis and people ooze along a stretch of bars catering exclusively to foreign clientele. Raucous, rosy expats chug pints of Irish lager, forgetting for a while that they are in China. Aspiring Beijing rock musicians, filmmakers, and other members of the art crowd mingle with young American professionals and students. Dance clubs and jazz cafes pump Western sounds into the hip, hedonistic crowd, and working girls with starry eyes saunter up and down the block, open for business.

Navigating the streets of Beijing can be a daunting process. Though the ring roads are neatly formatted, the city is so large, and the high rises and glossy billboards so monotonous, that landmarks are hard to discern. The only people who really know the city outside of their respective neighborhoods are the taxi cab drivers, who also serve as the most candid source of news for many Beijingers and especially for foreigners. A typical cab driver will spend the duration of the ride ranting to a customer about government corruption, how his family was just evicted because their apartment is being turned into a state-run residential high-rise, and whether the drastic modernization program designed to prepare Beijing for the Olympic games will help or hurt the city. Many cab drivers are also cranky that the taxi profession is not as prosperous as it was a few years ago. There are simply too many cabs on the streets; sometimes half of a traffic jam on a stretch of road is comprised of the little square maroon taxis, each containing a cantankerous cabbie sweating in the caged driver’s seat.

Taxi drivers sometimes asked me if I was Japanese or Korean, and expressed shock when I told them that I was an American born of immigrant parents. They were curious to know what it was like for Chinese people in America—if it was easy to go to college there, what the cities looked like, whether the traffic was as bad as it was in Beijing.
During my summer in Beijing, I purchased a used motor scooter for about US $150. I calculated that it would be cheaper to get around this way than taking cabs everywhere. (After a few weeks, however, the repairs ended up costing me a few hundred extra renminbi.) My chauffeur was a friend and punk guitarist who tore and sliced irreverently through traffic in true rock and roll style.

Our travels were limited to the streets in the outlying neighborhoods, as motor bikes are barred from the inner roads unless the driver purchases a special license plate. My bike, like many others in Beijing, was purchased through a deal with a friend rather than a legitimate seller. As I clung to my driver’s skinny frame from behind, the dust and heat often whipped my face so harshly that I had to wear a hat and keep my head down to avoid the sting. But at night, zooming across the asphalt was a scenic experience. The outer streets are much emptier in the dark than during the day. The pulsing traffic lights mingled with flashing neon signs and billboards. Hovering in place of the pollution-obscured stars over the matrix of avenues and alleys, the advertisements declared revolutions in cellular technology and the virtues of Pepsi. We flew past the sparkling emblems of the glorious 21st century, and for an ephemeral moment, we were self-fashioned rebels without a cause cruising through an Asian capitalist wonderland.

In daylight, Beijing is constantly moving. But its movement is within itself—a sort of constant, hectic writhing to the mechanical rhythms of urban life: the clandestine bustle of black market exchanges, the sputtering march of congested traffic, the chewing of fried egg pancakes and Big Macs, the lumbering of cranes and steamrollers that are endlessly blasting apart old buildings and replacing them with dull pastel-colored high-rises. On the sidewalks, shopkeepers loiter before their storefronts and prattle with customers. Old men in wife-beaters, polyester slacks and knee socks huddle pensively over Chinese chess boards. Workers take long breaks, and migrating laborers from the countryside in rumpled cotton shirts squat the trademark Beijing squat, rubbing their greasy heads idly. Roadside peddlers hawk tea-boiled eggs and pirated CD-ROMs, and bicycles of all sorts flow by—farmers on massive tricycles laden with fresh vegetables maneuvering alongside college students riding in pairs on rusted, creaking Raleighs.

The streets are peopled by the emerging Chinese middle class. Young women walk about pertly in cheap dresses and capri pants patterned after Western fashions. Unmistakable markers of a fashionable Beijing girl include: nude-colored, knee-high stockings paired with above-the-knee skirts; tiny backpacks purchased from counterfeit markets with slightly skewed Gucci logos or backwards zippers; and the outline of padded bras beneath tight T-shirts displaying randomly pleasant English words like “sweet” or “fresh.” Young men with crew cuts and nimble, eager looks weave in and out of crowds talking on cell phones. Twenty-somethings can be spotted through the windows of any Internet station or wang ba, where they spend hours or even days chatting online. Occasionally, a young Chinese pop-punk in baggy shorts and a band T-shirt scrapes across the sidewalk on a skateboard, his oversized wallet chain swinging from an empty pocket.

The other side of Beijing can be found in the little alleys where traffic cannot enter. A time capsule within this protean metropolis, they run through networks of flat gray hutong buildings, the traditional urban apartment complexes of imperial China. They have remained relatively unchanged, despite the government’s effort to modernize them with plumbing systems and renovations. Recently city officials have been working to eradicate the hutongs to build higher buildings in order to house the burgeoning population. But vestiges of these decrepit neighborhoods still remain.

Here, the city seems to slow down. Old ladies with big bellies and loose pants lounge in front of their doorways, and their balding men, who have probably spent more years in retirement than in the workforce, sit cross-legged and smoke Zhongnanhai brand cigarettes, watching the passersby in their alleyways. Toddlers run about, sometimes pausing to relieve themselves through functional flaps in the back of their traditional pajama pants. Some walls display faded cultural revolution cartoons and logos, while others display government notices admonishing against illegal labor by migrants who enter Beijing without special work permits.

Some hutong occupants are surprisingly quirky. The alley of the Bai Hua Hutong, nestled in the Jingshimencommercial district, houses a locally famous punk hangout, complete with a small CD collection, a tiny rehearsal room with a primitive PA system, and an assortment of deadbeat punk kids languishing in front of the doorway.

Some smaller streets running through modern apartment complexes are also closed to traffic. Less tranquil than the hutong alleys but more homely than the mainstream roads, these streets are a middle ground between the commercial and the residential enclaves. On cool nights, one such street located in the Haidian district, buzzes with people drinking Beijing Beer and munching on roasted lamb chops, salted soybean pods, peppered duck eggs on wooden skewers, and other street fare.

I spent many evenings sitting around with friends at a white plastic table on this street, all Beijing kids in their teens or twenties with nothing to do. One of them ran a small snack shop out of the front of his apartment building, which provided a convenient opportunity for gorging on popsicles and soft drinks. We would chat aimlessly through the wee hours, ordering stirfries from the restaurants across the street, rolling homegrown blunts (wild Cannabis is a well-known feature of Beijing’s urban botany), and listening to pirated CDs of Sublime and the Chinese metal band Tang Dynasty. My motorbike friend would pop ollies on his skateboard until he exhausted his gaunt frame. Occasional scuffles between rowdy bystanders provided evening entertainment. But most of the time, the scene was comfortably uneventful. We just let the night drift by in a haze of bitter smoke. Our eyes grew heavy from watching Beijing as the streets, alternating between endearing slackness and electric intensity, swept through our imaginations.

Photos Courtesy of http://www.beijingpage.com/#photo

2003 1-42 Online