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When spring rolls around in Beijing, it means more than just the appearance of green after months of grey and early darkness, more than singing birds and flowers and the occasional rain shower. To old school Beijinger’s, springtime means the beginning of park time, and Beijing’s many parks begin to show signs of life after barely stirring during the winter months.
There are a million reasons to go to Beijing’s parks for the average city resident, myself included. Chief among those reasons is the desire to see the color green and to escape the seemingly inescapable hum of the city, blaring of cars, and squash of teeming people so omnipresent throughout the city. Whether they are free or it’s necessary to pay a few jiao for a ticket, once inside a city park, the atmosphere outside just melts away. It’s no wonder that parks are such a popular place for the elderly, who seem to show up in them at the crack of dawn and don’t leave until past dark. On a day where it just makes sense to get out of the city – without actually getting out of the city – a retreat to Ritan, Beihai, or Xiangshan seems to make perfect sense. And seeing the types of activities that go on in the parks in the spring and summer months makes them all the more interesting to visit.
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Things that China lacks: oil, a decent network of highways, a quality control system for food and drugs, clean air in its cities. One thing that China absolutely does not lack: people. Everywhere you go in China, with the exception of some of the more sparsely populated Western provinces, you can’t help but feel surrounded by humanity. From the early hours of the morning until late in the evening, Chinese cities are teeming with them, from the very young to the very old. But spend any time in Beijing or elsewhere and you’ll begin to notice the absence of one particular age group: kids from middle school to high school age. During the school year, if you see them, they are either on their way to school or on their way home. Kids in this age group have school for about 6 hours per day, then have an average of 6 hours of homework every night. When Chinese students reach the age of 10 or so, they simply vanish, not to reappear until after they’ve sat for the test that will determine pretty much their entire future – their career, their financial status, everything. Just imagine that the 8-10 years of primary school through high school is nothing more than preparation for a two-day exam, known as the gaokao, with the direction of your life hanging in the balance. Each year, millions of high school kids complete the test in competition for a place in the countries universities, institutions which can accommodate only about 60% of their numbers. Now that’s pressure.
If you want to read more about this test of tests, check out this excellent article by Manuela Zoninsein in Slate.
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The first thing you learn: nobody’s even heard of General Tsao’s chicken. Negative on the tangerine chicken as well, and the shrimp lo mein is nowhere to be found. The good news is, there’s mooshu pork a plenty, but if you’re going to survive for very long, you’d better have some idea of what to expect in your typical Chinese greasy spoon, especially if you’re a student, on a budget, or otherwise trying to fit into the average Chinese person’s daily routine.
Within hours of a Beijing arrival, or arrival anywhere in the north of China for that matter, a visit to a typical Chinese restaurant could be the first place outside of your accommodations on your sightseeing agenda, and a glance at the menu won’t bring back memories of the takeout place back home, places that, if I memory serves me correctly, are invariably called “Great Wall” or “Ming Garden” or some variation thereof, all promising a tasty bounty of inedible red food of which you will eat approximately half. No, the real deal is much less hygienic, and certainly not FDA certified. That said, real Chinese food bears very little resemblance to the scrumptious cuisine served in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Western world, and in this reviewer’s opinion, is much the better for it.
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When I first started coming to China and getting involved speaking Chinese on a daily basis, I was often confronted with a situation in which I thought I knew what was being said because I understood each of the words used. It’s an easy approach if you’re translating directly, but direct translation has its faults. Often, it will lead to misunderstanding and get you into a bit of trouble that with a more perfect understanding you would have been able to avoid.
One standout example is the phrase
要不要？
Yào bù yào?
Now translated directly, this means “want no want,” which to me came out to something very close to “Do you want it or not?” Walking down a street full of vendors in Yabaolu (雅宝路), each of whom shouts at you “do you want it or not?” over and over again even after you’ve passed on by can be, and has been, interpreted as both annoying and aggressive. Add to that the onslaught of another variant on the phrase:
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More than any other city in any other country on earth, Beijing is a bicycle town. It is home to more than 10 million bikes and is accommodating to its bikers. Every road has a wide, sometimes very wide, bicycle lane on each side, and Beijingers make sure that the space is used. At all hours of the day, but especially for the several hours each morning and evening that comprise rush hour, bicycle lanes throughout the city are swarmed with riders. Riding a bike in China is not at all about being an environmentalist. You don’t ride for your health, or to make a statement. Since the days of the revolution, the Chinese ride because they need to get places.
Of the 100 million bicycles produced in the world every year, over a quarter of them are produced in Tianjin, a city about an hour’s train ride southeast of Beijing. While the city itself does not have much to offer, in the cyclist’s mind, it does produce at least one glorious product: the Flying Pigeon (Feige) bicycle. Fifty pounds of iron with rod brakes and little stopping power, the gearless Flying Pigeon was once the most ubiquitous bicycle in China. Deng Xiao Ping, Mao’s successor and the architect of China’s transition from a purely socialist command economy to a “socialist market economy” himself made the Henry Ford like declaration “A Flying Pigeon in every household” to showcase what economic progress had in store for the Chinese people. The company complied, offering the bike in any color you like, so long as it’s black. The Flying Pigeon’s chief competition, the Forever (Yongjiu) brand bicycle, looks very much the same: large tires, fenders, chain guard, kickstand, irritating bell, back package carrier, and handlebar basket. Together, the two brands serve to clog the bicycle arteries of Beijing and other biker friendly cities throughout China.
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