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| BThere was the man with the wispy2) Confucian beard engrossed in Chinese chess on a street corner. There was the food frying on street-side griddles3). Most important, though, there were the parks in the morning. Beijingers — especially, but not exclusively, retirees — use the city’s parks to sing, dance, exercise and generally be together. When I walked into Beihai Park shortly after dawn, I immediately passed about 20 people silently making the slow pivots of tai chi. Elsewhere, solitary individuals did serious deep knee bends by a fence. Beihai Park is about movement. I watched about 40 women flick4) fans and scarves in a sort of line dance, then walked on to discover a calligrapher5) brushing Chinese characters on the sidewalk in water. As the morning stretched on, old men waddled around with wire bird cages in hand. My favorites, though, were the singers. I have seen few things as nakedly joyful as a group of neighbors gathered in the slanting light of morning to sing their lungs out. Watching them, cynicism became impossible. How can you not appreciate a city that, even for a moment, allows you to feel that way? Instead, my first impressions were of a flat, dusty city filled with grim rows of identical, Soviet-style apartment blocks. Construction cranes perched on the skyline like flocks of gargantuan6), robotic flamingos7), and the air was sepia-toned8) with smog and dust. Walking Beijing’s expansive avenues, I felt a heavy sense of anomie9). Yet I quickly discovered that no city moves so quickly between massive and modest, between anonymous and intimate. On my first day, for example, I drifted south from the vast, gray expanse of Tiananmen Square into the narrow hutongs, or alleyways, of the Qianmen district. Immediately, the traffic noise faded. Low, gray-walled courtyard homes lined lanes that were dotted with decrepit10) bicycles. Through an open door, I glanced at a group of friends hunkered11) over a board game... I have a theory that every country changes you in one specific way, making you a slightly different person while inside its borders. I still need a decent explanation for how Beijing transformed me, a cheapskate and a hater of shopping malls, into someone who was untrustworthy with an ATM card. Despite cultural differences, there are certain human universals. One is that gritty12) art districts will eventually attract pleasant cafes, chic boutiques13) and reputations for being overrun by yuppies14) and tourists. This is the story of Dashanzi, also known as Factory 798, a place I absolutely loved. Dozens of galleries, restaurants and trendy shops populate what at first appears to be a postindustrial nightmare, a warren of smokestacks15) and pipes. Dashanzi’s art was hit-and-miss16) — some artists have apparently balked at the tourist influx17) and settled elsewhere — but the atmosphere never faltered. “She”was a hazy place that was“hard to get hold of18),” according to the statement of an artist here. The city was “a place between reality and dream.” |
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