September 9th marked my year anniversary in Beijing. The life I have here now and what I had a year ago seem like completely different worlds. Beijing has transformed from a gigantic, strange city into something much more familiar, even something that manages to feel small, or at least localized, at times. My apartment no longer seems so far away from everything; the simple trips to the grocery store, or a new area of town, are no longer fraught with hidden dangers. I no longer have police knocking at my door early in the morning (see my post from last fall), and I’ve even been able to find people to help me solve the most persistent visa problem (I’m legal till January now).
My life for the last two months.
Beijing is a universe that contains worlds within worlds. As I’ve become more familiar with the city and its inhabitants, I feel like I’ve been able to understand the architecture of at least some of these. It is like a giant canvas with dashes of color in it, centers of culture, learning, or business. I’ve been able to catch glimpses of a few of these; my time working at the law firm, and my current work with the book on legal reform, have exposed me to a group of people who spend a great deal of time writing, talking, and reading about the big issues, like democracy, civil rights, reform, etc. Their discussions, usually accessible to me via email or the articles they write, always look at issues from the long-term, macro-perspective. As such, my perspective has also become somewhat disconnected from the world around me.
But this world is really only one small part of Beijing; it only happens to be a rather monopolizing force in my life right now. There are also things much more tangible. There’s a music scene in Beijing, a theater scene, an athletic scene (foreigners and Chinese competing in MMA fights in Beijing stadiums?!), a clubbing scene, etc.
To provide an example of someone who lives in the same city, but lives a very different life from me: one potential housemate who came to look at a room in my apartment last week was a Swedish man in his late 20s who worked for Kawasaki, selling motorcycles. When I asked him about his work, he flew into a flurry of the most adrenaline-testosterone-pumped stories of his motorcycles escapades in Beijing, including racing against Ferrari on the highway to the airport, doing a stoppie (front-wheeled wheelie) at high-speed in the middle of Beijing’s weekend traffic. Perhaps most incredible is that he has maintained his high-risk riding style even after nearly killing himself and his girlfriend in a wreck last year (he spent 4 months in the hospital after breaking his neck). In the end, he decided the room was too small for him, and decided not to move in. I’m a little grateful.
That left Ali, the current occupant of the room, time to decide whether he wanted to extend his stay or not. He decided to renew his contract for another three months. Ali is from Pakistan; he’s a member of a Shia ethnic minority group. He has been in China for three years now, and, for obvious reasons (war), is trying to extend his stay for as long as possible. He speaks English that he learned from James Bond movies, sometimes using phrases that seem transported from the 60s. He and his Chinese girlfriend speak English together, which makes me wonder how much between them is left understood. But despite his occasional strangeness, he is a polite and decent person.
These are stories of foreigners, which are the bulk of whom I’m surrounded by on a day to day basis. This is strange to me, but in some ways also quite natural. Regardless of how much time one spends in China, and regardless how well one speaks Chinese, someone of a different race here is always an “other”. I suppose this is the natural result in a country made up of so many, ethnically homogenous, people, but it is still something that I, as a diversity-embracing American, cannot accept as normal.
But even as the majority of Chinese people do not see foreign residents as their countrymen, there are nonetheless more and more people from other countries living in China. There is a famous area of Guangzhou which has become taken over by African immigrants; Koreans occupy huge neighborhoods in Beijing (there were even more last year, but the population is still in no way small). China has no shortage of xenophobia; there is certainly a great deal of suspicion on the part of conservatives about the outside world’s corrupting influence. But within this conservative society, there are smaller worlds full diversity, openness, and experimentation. In regard to my interest in China, I have passed the point where I want to “jump” into total cultural immersion; I have reintroduced Western food into my diet; I live in a high-rise complex with the modern conveniences of a separated shower and real heat (my apartment last winter was freezing). I have begun to unashamedly carve out my own space in this international megacity.
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