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The airport is huge and looks very modern but it was completely deserted. Outside there were hundreds of taxis driving around empty. In addition, there were other drivers on foot selling rides to the 'city' for 4,5 times the usual price.
The driver of the first one I had hailed did not want to put the meter on. Instead, he showed me a kind of meter under his seat. I left that taxi and found another one with a meter.
The highway was very wide, the traffic (on a sunday morning) was minimal and half the cars occupying it were new, shiny black limousines or 4x4 monsters with tinted windows. There was a lot of beeping mainly because I think there is some kind of highway code which forces drivers to announce themselves when overtaking. The taxi driver made a point to show me that his humble suzuki could overtake the 4x4's just as easy. Thankfully, I put my seat belt on before we reached mach 8.
Soon the outskirts of the city appeared and hundreds of high-rise buildings were visible in the distance. Some of them being constructed, others finished and waited to become obsolete. Strange how progress is celebrated by erecting rectangular phalluses with red lights flashing on top.
Crossing the street at zebra crossings (not at intersections with traffic lights) is very dangerous. To begin with, drivers will never ever stop for any pedestrian or cyclist. They prefer to overtake getting in the way of other traffic than wait 2 minutes. Secondly, crossing these wide streets must be done in two phases. The tiny space between the two lanes where pedestrians and cyclists must squeeze during the two phases can be seen in pictures 2 and 11. The bicyles and the tricycles extend on either side and drivers with excessive speed beep and try to overtake often getting in the way of other drivers. As a travel guide put it, the accumulation of people at a crossing will reach a critical mass. At this point they will start crossing, ignoring the cars. The pedestrians reach a number that it can not be ignored by the drivers. Crossing alone can be quite scaring, especially when you have to wait in the middle.
In between or behind the high-rise modern buildings which appear like mushrooms overnight, there are older four-storey appartment blocks (must be from the 60's and 70's). Usually painted terracota and green colors or just left grey. Of the interior I have no knowledge but the staircases look extremely dark and claustrophobic, while their windows are all dusty and neglected. Some windows have extensions in the form of improvised iron balconies where things are stored. It is quite common, I have observed, to convert these balconies into bird cages; that the room looks through the window to a bird cage and the bird inside the cage has a view to the outside. A lot of the appartments, if not the majority, have air-conditioning units installed and also dilapitated plastic canopies.
These buildings are arranged, of course, with "feng-shui" in mind (like all Beijing is). In between there are sunny courtyards serving as communal areas for late-afternoon socialising, exercising or playing games of cards, "manhjong" and "go". They also serve as bicycle-parks and are swept with religious zeal.
The lucky traveller would have been presented the opportunity to study the peoples' clothes exhibited publicly on laundry days either in these courtyards or outside on the pavements by the street, hung on lines tied between trees. Of particular interest, from a colour as well as from a design point of view, are the under-garments.
The "hutong" -- meaning "narrow alleyway" is the older and most traditional solution to the housing needs of the ordinary people of Beijing. The hutong consists of a large number of houses and a web of narrow alleyways running through them -- they often lead to a dead-end. Each house is in effect a set of rooms arranged around a courtyard and enclosed (protected) by a 2m brick wall. One or more families spanning two or three generations can inhabit each house. Most of the houses offer very basic living conditions (no toilets, with running water only recently installed -- it is said). However, the people seem happy to live there because (it is said) they appreciate the strong sense of community that exists in these neighbourhoods as well as the combination of the "inside" (the rooms) and the "outside" (the courtyard) so close together.
It is quite common that the alleys have no trees, instead the trees are private and grow inside the courtyards. Usually there are communal lavatories on the street serving the houses with no private toilets. I do not know if the state employs people to do the cleaning of the toilets and sweep the streets or wheather the residents do this themselves, but everything is impecably clean (the toilets smell but look clean), the streets swept, the rubbish collected or piled neatly awaiting collection.
In the larger alleys, there are small shops selling cigarettes, alcohol and groceries, a strangely large number of hair-dressers and barbers and, of course, outdoor "restaurants". The latter offer only a very limited menu which basically consists of rice, (bean curd) soup and dumplings which are steamed outside on the street on improvised steamers: a coal fire at the bottom heats a very large pan full of water. The pan is covered by a piece of wood with two or three small holes on it from where the steam comes out. The dumplings are in bamboo containers (like those one sees in chinese places in London, for example), stuck 6 or 7 in height and placed on top of one of the steam-holes. It takes about 10 minutes to cook. There is usually one or two tables on the street and it is not uncommon for customers to bring their own containers to take-away food. However, the use of the much-hated styrofoam container becomes more and more wide-spread.
These "restaurants" are not something exotic or offer exquisite cuisine but appart from catering cheaply for workers and locals, they present an opportunity for the traveller of a broad-minded disposition to quietly observe. Of course, one has to bravely conquer over a number of significant inhibitions: concerns about health, communicating what you want to eat and shutting out the people's frequent paroxysms of coughing which invariably lead to a loud expeltion of a healthy amount of phlegm, straight onto the floor, just to tip the balance of yin fighting yang.
From what little I saw, the main form of fuel in the "hutong" is coal, or in any event some kind of coal for there is not a lot of smoke around. Coal-distribution places are widespread. There, coal-dust is pressed into small cylinders which when burned, they turn into terracota colour. I have also seen calor-gas being used.
Although the "hutong" is not smoky or black from the extensive use of coal, Beijing's atmosphere is extremely polluted. Sources of the pollution might be:
On the other hand, most cars I have seen are new (the vast majority using unleaded petrol most likely) and should not cause a lot of pollution. Unlike some east-european countries (e.g. Bulgaria) where the cars on the streets are mostly mechanical rejects from European Union countries.
The tradition of the "Hutong" is generally dying with a lot of them being demolished to make way for sky-scrappers or new highways. Most young chinese professionals probably opt for the modern living offered by the appartment blocks, as living in a "hutong" is seen (and largely is) an anachronism, especially when one does no longer see any benefits from living with one's extended family and forming close ties with neighbours. On the other hand there still is an underclass in Beijing which can not afford the huge rent of a modern appartment.
The end came after 25 minutes. Great! I was again offered a cigarette.
On my way home I remembered that I could have got fleas or lice, but of course I did not and felt ashamed about my paranoia, mainly provoked by the "lonely planet" guide -- I have not regretted stealing it. While on the subject of travel guides written by westerners, the Discovery Channel's guide states the following on page 44:
[After the victory of the communist party in 1949]
A new marriage law made women equal to men and divorce
possible. The liberation of women, in theory, seemed
like true progress, but in reality women had to hold
full-time jobs in addition to maintaining the home as before.
No comment appart from: if you find this guide in a bookshop do not even steal it.
On the one side (north) there is Wanping City, a kind of old military camp which is now being reconstructed. On the other side of the bridge there is a rubbish dump and some more hutongs where people live. A few forelorn boats were scattered out of place on the dry river bed.
The "incident at Marco Polo Bridge" on 7/7/1937 where some Chinese soldiers have fired against Japanese invading troops on the other side, gave the pretext to the Japanese to attack Beijing. It is said that the whole incident was organised by the Japanese. In a museum nearby material from the atrocities the Japanese committed during their occupation of China is exhibited. The Japanese military have committed many many murders and rapes during their occupation of China. They have also conducted medical experiments on Chinese prisoners in concentration camps. These facts go largely unaknowledged by the Japanese school textbooks. In 2003 on such a sad anniversary a bunch of Japanese tourists booked a hotel and hired 500 prostitutes for a week of orgies. It was reported that it was to celebrate that anniversary but that is not confirmed.
On the other side of the river (south) a farm contains the a fighter airplane (looks like Japanese from WWII). It rests on a pile of bricks and dogs piss on it.
On the way back, at the area of Majiapu, I passed by a huge "river" full of organic material (a.k.a. shit). An interesting idea of nearby street restaurants to save on dish-washing is to give customers their soup in soup-bowls wrapped in a plastic bag. When the customer is done, the plastic bag is thrown away and the bowl is wrapped again for the next customer. Most ingenious, however it was the mute agreement of the customers which left me speechless.
Majiapu also smells of kebabs. This is south Beijing and is something different.
The following extracts are taken from Beijing Review(there must be an online version perhaps), April 8, 2004, page 25:
During the 80's, work units took care of all matters related to employees' housing, medical care and pension. Zhang [a gardener who had just got married] immediately applied to his work unit for an appartment but the wait was a long one as age and length of service all took priority.
He was eventually allocated an 8-square-metre room in an old dorm building, which was referred to as 'tongzilou', with a long corridor through each floor, lined by dormitories on either sides and without private kitchens or toilets. Each family used public toilets and cooked in the corridor. There was very little privacy.
Although the dorm home was old and small, many of Zhang's colleagues envied him.
In, 1987, Zhang's father moved to a 30m2 appartment allocated by his work unit and Zhang's family moved with his parents. There was 1 bedroom, 1 sitting room and 1 toilet and 1 kitchen. Zhang and his wife shared the sitting room while his parents the bedroom. The most satisfying factor was the independent bathroom allowing the couple for the first time to bath out of the public eye.
At the end of 1998, China launched the housing reform which put an end to work units allocating houses to their employees as welfare benefits and replaced the practice with housing subsidies. Thereafter, Chinese people could buy appartments of their own choice on the real estate market.
According to Beijing's policy on housing subsidy, Zhang received 80,000 Y(9,670 USD) as per his length of service. In 2002, Zhang bought an appartment (16th floor, 90m2) by way of a mortgage loan with a primary payment of 120,000 Y (14,500 USD).
Zhang explained that even 5 years ago, Chinese people could hardly understand what a mortgage loan was, but now it has become the most popular way to buy new homes.
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