China rising

The clanking of mahjong tiles shuffling across the velvet tablecloth. The soft swishing of the calligraphy brush sweeping out beautiful Chinese characters on the sidewalk. The sight of red paper couplets painted on doors to express hopes for the New Year. As I walk through a Beijing “hutong,” an alley filled with courtyard residences, my nostalgic yearning for old Beijing is abruptly interrupted by radio music blasting from cycle-rickshaws carrying camera-snapping tourists zooming through the neighborhood.

Hutongs are a dying breed of neighborhoods, save a few for cultural preservation and tourist appreciation. New urban development, skyscraper apartments and pedestrian walkways could be welcome changes from the overcrowding, poor heating and unsanitary conditions that are common in most hutong urban slums. But I cannot get over the violence of the chai symbol, meaning “to destroy” or “destruction,” marked on crops of old buildings set for demolition. Racing down the Beijing highway I see the chai characters painted in dripping blue across the tiled wall of a storefront whose time is up... whose fate is sealed.

Before the 1980s, China had little skyline because it was believed that tall buildings would prevent the passage of spirits. Today the tallest building in Beijing, the China World Trade Center Tower 3, glitters at a striking 74 stories and the towering Chinese Building District high-rises are more the rule than exception. But, urban development does not simply entail change to the physical structures. With the destruction of hutongs, so too came the destruction of a neighborhood community and families forced out by construction companies. Many families’ protests demanding fair compensation for their relocation fall on deaf ears within the government, while their former addresses become $1 million properties that imitate the old Chinese architecture they replace.

This changing urban landscape is more than geographic rearrangement; it is symptomatic of a new China. This past January, China confirmed for the first time that its 690.79 million people living in urban areas exceeded its rural population. With the massive urban migration, a consumer-driven society has erupted. In the swanky Village North, a shopping district reminiscent of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, giant video billboards show fashion models strutting on the runway. Retail stores have clothing priced higher than a month’s food stipend. Walking down the street toward the Xitucheng subway station, music advertising McDonald’s ice cream lulls me into a disconcerting sense of happiness. The number of Apple stores and KFC restaurants makes giving directions based on these landmarks meaningless. And trying to keep up with the fashionable Beijing women is too daunting and exhausting a task for me to realistically ponder, even with the easy accessibility of knock-off Longchamp purses, Tory Burch shoes and Hunter rain boots. The saying “Keeping up with the Jones” takes on a whole new meaning when we speak of “Keeping Up with Beijingers.”

It is easy to become intoxicated with the consumerism of this global city, but I wonder about the original Communist plans for the city and their vision of Beijing as an industrial capital, not a parasite on the rest of the country. The over-extraction of underground water in Beijing has compelled the country to develop projects to bring in external sources of water. The pollution in Beijing as reported by the U.S. Embassy is an alarming PM 2.5. Over the past few months, smog pollution has become so bad that planes have been grounded due to decreased visibility. As an American raised in a consumer-driven economy, to say that Beijing has gone too far in its search of capitalist enterprises is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. And yet the momentum of Chinese desire for more electronic goods, savvy fashions and luxury vehicles seems only to be speeding up.

In Tom Scoccaa’s book “Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future,” Scoccaa speaks of three Beijings: a moneyed artificial one, a wretched and broken one and a live and bustling one. He argues that the challenge is not to be fooled into thinking that Beijing is only one of those three, despite how easy it is “to stand in each one, any one, and believe you were seeing the true thing.” In traveling from India to China in my study abroad, I heard someone emphasize how I would be able to compare where developing countries are coming from and where they are going. With the 2008 Olympic Games, China has arrived. I am, however, increasingly reluctant to wholeheartedly characterize its arrival as “progress” for the world or the Chinese people. After living a week in this global city, I must disagree with Scoccaa and worry that the real Beijing and the true China is becoming increasingly the money-eyed, artificial one.

Kristen Lee is a Trinity junior who is spending the Spring in Udaipur, India and Beijing, China through the Duke Global Semester Abroad Program. Her column runs every other Monday.