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Expat's Eye
Print Edition> Expat's Eye
UPDATED: October 2, 2009 NO. 40 OCTOBER 8, 2009
Hidden Treasure
By GOU FU MAO
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RED GREETING: National flags are hoisted outside shops along Yandai Xiejie Alley in Beijing to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China 

There are many times I feel close to going crazy in Beijing. The over-hooting horns and the dangerous driving of local drivers are slowly driving us cyclists to extinction, here in the bicycle capital of the world.

What keeps me sane is my weekly session with some of Beijing's warmest souls. We meet at the English corner in the Chaoyang Library. There, all topics are open for discussion. We usually talk about family and business, two Chinese priorities across all age groups, I've discovered. There are always plenty of requests to explain European religion and culture. Some, however, like one of my older students, 80-year-old Mr. Gou, prefers to sing, in English.

Lately we've talked about the 60th anniversary celebrations and I'm lucky in the diversity of ages that I get a good sample of what China's thinking. Most look forward to the time off, some have been inconvenienced (by their offices being shut to make way for rehearsals) and some worry about the cost of it all to local taxpayers when there's already so much to pay for.

Frugality comes easily to my students, who saw harder times.

I've heard stories from the 1940s, from the Shanghai native who came to Beijing with her sister, where the two studied chemistry. The toughness of 1960s China is explained by Summer, the man who manned the public intercom system at the Aeronautics Academy in Tianjin. And others tell me about the 1970s, years spent in the Chinese embassy in Albania. I've heard about 1980s China from a woman who spent it at home waiting for her husband, away overseas learning about Western retail management.

There's also the younger generations, like Mr. Lou who works as an attendant at an upscale apartment complex in the suburban district of Shunyi. He complains a lot about complaints and rudeness from tenants. It's a rudeness he and other migrants are unfortunately used to. Shunyi encapsulates the widening income gap of modern China like nowhere else and in this newer patch of the district migrant worker neighborhoods have been leveled to make way for luxury restaurants and furniture stores.

I sometimes feel that even a 60-year-old China is still not very well known or understood. Foreign friends with little time to spare on business and tourist visits to Beijing complain about similar things: aggressive driving, bad air and a lot of ostentatious displays of wealth such as big cars, paunches and loud shirts.

It's a shame, because those are the conspicuous minority. To know Beijing you have to make an effort to meet, and talk to, the majority—the likes of retired doctor Rose, who runs the English corner. Or Mr. Tang, the retired railway station inspector. These are friendly, knowable folks with all the patience possible to explain and share China with a curious foreigner. I feel very lucky to have them to talk, and listen, to.

They'll likely never—or rarely—step into a Starbucks. Their means are modest and they don't have any flashy sedan to park on the footpath. No, but they'll teach you priceless, disappearing Beijing knowledge and crafts. They'll invite you to eat jiaozi and play shuttlecock. And on October 1, I marked the big 60th birthday with them, the ordinary, decent people of Beijing.

The writer is Irish and lives in Beijing

 



 
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