Beijing, Beijing

I’m a few days short of a month in-country, and here I am only now writing an introductory post. My time home in Memphis was at first difficult, readjusting to familial cohabitation, suburban lifestyle, and discovering Memphis life for a post-21 post-grad. Ultimately, I came to find a face of Memphis I suspected may have existed, but which I had never before experienced myself. The winter holidays afforded me a chance to reconnect with old friends and glimpse something of what adulthood in Memphis could be like. The first days of 2009 found me reeling not from a New Year’s hangover, but from an overexposure to what must’ve been the smokiest bar east of the Mississippi that night—the endearingly decrepit P&H on Madison. My physical infirmity was matched by a mental semblance, in which my January 3rd date of departure to Beijing seemed a horrible mistake. For so many reasons, I found myself unable to sleep the night before my 6:00 a.m. departure, but morning did come, and I did embark on a generally sleep-deprived but sleepy 22ish hours of travel. The journey’s culinary and celluloid aspects do not merit mention.

January 4th found me more than 12 hours in the future, and arrived to Beijing International Airport, still squeaky clean and gleaming from those glorious August days you may have remembered everyone talking about. I was met by “Andy,” a 30-something Harbin native and one of the Chinese teachers at the private, extracurricular English school I will be working at for the next year, E-Plus. A bus ride and taxi later, I found myself in an overheated and windowless 4-star hotel room, attempting to remain at least in a shallow REM state from the hour of 8:00 p.m. onward. I eventually rose at 6:00 a.m., figuring that the city would be honking and alive in the early morning light. Not having a window, however, I was surprised to find upon exiting the hotel that it was in fact still dark and absent of honking or life outside.

Nonetheless, I headed for the small supermarket around the corner I had found the night before. To my delight, this small chaoshi (literally “supermarket”) had a kitchen in it preparing my favorite breakfast item from my previous sojourn in Beijing, a jidan guanbing, best described as an egg-pancake, slathered with a salty sauce and spicy sauce, served folded with some suspicious lettuce. It was not long before I had collected a complete breakfast of water, instant coffee, yogurt, and the glorious egg-pancake. It was then, however, that I was informed that the store had not technically opened yet, and none of the cashiers had money to cash me out. I muddled about before some manager-type finally came up front with some money to ring me up. In my suffocating room, I quickly enjoyed some Nescafe and yogurt along with China Central Television’s stalwart English-language option: CCTV 9. I reemerged sometime later into the now honking and alive Beijing, lit by early morning light. As I made my way down large avenues toward the suspected location of an internet café, the doubts of previous days were absent. Somehow, that slight haze in the air, the cacophony of morning traffic outside an elementary school, and the unnerving chill of winter on the North China Plain aroused in me a sense of calm and nostalgia. This was China, and it seemed unreal that I was both suddenly here again and that I had left two years ago.

In the four weeks since that moment, I have settled somewhat into a capital city of an estimated 19ish million that is both distinctly Chinese and international—with denizens representing not only every part of China, but probably every country in the world, all the while maintaining a uniquely individual character and culture of its own. I think most everyone who has lived in Beijing for some period of time will, if not praise it, at least concede that this city has an individual character and something of a special charm despite its harsh environmental circumstance. Bitterly cold and dry winters are juxtaposed with gruelingly muggy and hot summers, all the while under threat of sandstorms from the encroaching Gobi Desert and devastating air pollution. The city manages to mingle century-old history and some of China’s most well-known tourist sites with internationally recognized adventures in modern architecture. Between gleaming skyscrapers, hide aged hutong lanes, grid-like, winding alleys of single-story, traditional housing—growing fewer and fewer under the wrecking ball of progress. In some you find a pausing silence and insulation from the bustle outside, attracting the glances of old men and women walking small dogs or various Beijingers carrying their groceries home. Others are populated by a noticeably more international and younger crowd, home to many of the hipper stores and small bars.

I spent 4-5 weeks in Beijing in the first months of 2007 at the CET Janterm program, and my first few weeks back has largely been a re-familiarization and rediscovery of the city. I have returned to many of the restaurants and entertainment spots I haunted while studying here, reliving old memories and reuniting with old classmates that are here working now or passing through on break for Chinese New Year (Spring Festival). My new coworkers have also shared their discoveries and my new explorations including such places as a hidden Mongolian bar with a horse-head fiddle player, throat-singing, and beautiful songs. China is a place of coincidences, and my first weeks in Beijing have only given me new encounters to add to the tally, including randomly running into the current group of Middlebury students studying abroad at one bar and bumping into a Middlebury grad a year ahead of me in a café on the east side. There has been no shortage of things to do outside of work whether it’s food, music, culture, or simply good company. Now if only I can start forcing myself to read my Chinese novel I picked up and get in the hang of this teaching thing…