Reporting from China: Beijing, both History and Future at Once

After a fourteen hour flight from LAX to Shanghai, and a two hour domestic flight, we landed in Beijing in the early morning of Thursday, January 16th. After crashing into bed for the night, we got up early and headed out, met by a flurry of snow, cars, bikes, and pedestrians, some people going to work, many others going to university. Besides the staggering number of bikes, this scene looked little different than any other major city. China, there is no doubt, is a modern nation.

Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China, is shaded by many different restaurant and store signs, and large advertisements, almost like a scaled down Time's Square. Audis, Volkswagens, the occasional Mercedes, and Buicks, some old, some new, speed across their wide streets, in and out of traffic, narrowly missing pedestrians. In China, cars have the right a way, and they use it; when making right turns, many people simply honk their horn as if to warn pedestrians they're coming, and to inform them that if they do get hit, well, it is their own fault. New York drivers have nothing on drivers all across China.

Beijing is an odd mix of the old and the new. On one side of the street, you will see advertisements for clothing, electronics or anything else, along with new construction; on the other side of the street, you will see drab, Russian-style buildings, government buildings, with a Red Guard at attention in the entryway. It is a striking contrast; at once, you see the present and future of China, capitalist, quickly moving, modern, and you also see old China, the fabled Red Guard, symbols of Mao's destructive reign.

Beijing is a very surreal place. While seeing so many advertisements, cars and well-dressed people gives Beijing a similar feel to a large Western city, where you are free to do as you please, this sense of freedom is tempered by the starkly different architecture of the government buildings with the Red Guard, which serve to remind you who is really in control.

The people of Beijing do not seem discontented with their one-party government. They are concerned with going to school, or going to work -- with succeeding. They almost ignore it, as if government censorship and limited freedom are merely minor annoyances in their unalterable path toward success. The Chinese people are on a mission, both personal and national.

The tour guides refer to China now as the "new China," one where capitalism is the dominant economic system, and prosperity abounds. They are very proud of their country, both their long history, and their recent ascendancy from Mao's destruction to their current blistering economic growth rate. This enthusiasm is clear in all parts of the city and, indeed, all along Eastern China. The same look of eagerness for the future, for work and success, is on the faces of street peddlers and shop owners, and important business people.

But while this is a new period of economic reform, a free market is certainly not new for the Chinese. China has a long history of, if not free markets, regional specialization and trade. Historically, the Chinese have been quite entrepreneurial, and adept at marketing. This is no more evident than in the old shopping streets of Beijing. These buildings are very old, the streets already narrow filled with thousands of people, but the stores range from upscale clothing stores to old-style tea shops. The smaller shops are trying anything they can to bring people in; many shop owners stand outside with a loudspeaker and beacon people into their shop. Old meets new in these streets, which is a metaphor for Beijing itself; at once China's capital city, home to both the Forbidden City and Summer Palace, and only an hour and a half from the Great Wall, and also one of the main center's of China's economic miracle. There is innovation in the air on these streets, even as history swirls with future.

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