Beijing Then And Now

I heard from a China aficionado one time that "If you haven't been to China in the last six months, you haven't been to China." He was referring to the rapid changes taking place in China's major cities, although I am sure there are many areas of rural China that have not changed so quickly. 

As for Beijing, though, it is an apt comment.  Our second Inner Circle in Mainland China was held a week ago and the city of Beijing is markedly different from my first visit.

That first Inner Circle was held here five years ago, pre-Olympics, when Beijing's airport was big but unimpressive.  Now it is world-class. There were two subway lines in 2006.  Now, a whopping thirteen subway lines connect neighborhoods I'd not seen before, since visiting them back then required long taxi rides from central Beijing hotels. 

Many of the neighborhoods I visited then have changed as well. In fact, many of the Hutongs, relics of old China (hutong literally means alley way and the word is now used to describe neighborhoods as well as the labyrinthian pathways themselves).

I'm told that in preparation for the Olympics, the Chinese authorities simply razed entire neighborhoods of hutongs, uprooting families who had lived in them for many generations and moving them to high rise housing elsewhere.

The remaining Hutongs seem doomed as well.  They are one story, and occupy valuable real estate that could be occupied by office towers, hotels and the like.  And the little coal stoves used by Hutong residents to cook their food and keep warm in the cold Beijing winters were acknowledged to be pollution machines and health hazards in general, their smoke emitting clouds of fumes that seemed to sit in the air without diffusing.

I stayed part of the times in central Beijing, near the Forbidden City and other tourist attractions. The other nights were in the Northwestern area of Beijing, no longer the boonies.  It was in my first visit, now home to Microsoft and other tech companies.  It feels like Silicon Valley with a Chinese twist. Most of the other hotel guests there were Asian, wearing jeans and T shirts that made them seem like California transplants.  Turns out many of them are.  I talked with one young man who recently left his San Jose job with Microsoft to work for Google in Beijing, his home town.  He said he wants to be in Beijing again "now that so much of the action is here."

He's right about the pace of things here.  In the three days of our stay at the Somerset apartment hotel here, the dirt path in front of one of the tech high rises was transformed into a Belgian block sidewalk complete with planting areas... with trees planted in them.

Six months from now, there will be even more changes.  Let's hope reducing the pollution--it's bad--is high on the list.  Good luck with that, though. Every day another 1000 cars are purchased in Beijing.  It's so bad that every day, by government fiat, 20% of the autos are not allowed to be driven, determined by the last number on your auto license plate. They'll take your car away if it is on the move on the wrong day.  The communists don't mess around when they want something done.  So let's hope they walk the talk about solving the pollution problem.  Otherwise, Beijing won't be a place I'll want to revisit.

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That first Inner Circle was held here five years ago, pre-Olympics, when Beijing's airport was big but unimpressive. Now it is world-class. There were two subway lines in 2006. Now, a whopping thirteen subway lines connect neighborhoods I'd not seen before, since visiting them back then required long taxi rides from central Beijing hotels.