Beijing Impressions

Beijing: So much more alive, more vibrant, more smelly! A city of big causeways and myriad wending alleyways that threaten to swallow you. Each is a city in its own right, replete with markets, shops, hair salons, restaurants, old women complaining, young couples walking, and nearly naked children with wise faces perched on handcarts, surveying it all. Public toilets abound—one on every corner, wafting its odour to mingle with the food and people and dog smells of the street. The air is hot but dry, the sun casting mottled shadows on the larger, tree-lined boulevards, catching the red lanterns lining the street and washing out the neon facades of the more glamorous restaurants, making them even more tacky. Three bird cages hang from one tree above a stand of bicycles. I sat in the only restaurant I could find that was still open and busy for lunch at 3 in the afternoon and devoured a bowl of eggplant-pork noodles drowned in enough oil to fry a cat. I sipped a can of cold coconut milk.

I feel much more at home here than in Shanghai. People seem less rushed, more relaxed. The mere presence of trees and gardens does wonders for the spirits, and the older, crumbling architecture gives it a sense of concrete PLACE (spatiality) in this McWorld that Shanghai lacks. And on the steet, a white UN truck honks in irritation as a taxi cab cuts it off.