Ich Bin Ein Beijinger: Ten Ways to Fall in Love with Beijing

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

October 2001 - So she’s not the world’s most beautiful city. Granted, she doesn’t offer much by way of natural scenery, and what little she can boast – the mountains to her north and west – remains obscured most days by the dust and haze that hangs in the air. Her weather could be better and yes, her traffic sucks. Yet in the seven years I’ve lived here I’ve fallen in love with Beijing, irrationally and irretrievably.

We have our bad days, when we quarrel, when I can only find fault, when I even threaten to leave her. Keeping the love alive takes real work, as it does in any relationship. I recently returned from a vacation in France – sensuous France, with her lush, voluptuous terrain and her genteel 
manner. I confess I found it hard at first to come back to my stern, gray matron, dressed so unfashionably, with that red band on her arm. But Beijing and I have since patched things up and renewed our vows. I belong to her alone. Things between us are better now than ever.

Still, I find it necessary to shore up my occasionally flagging commitment with a periodic recitation – how do I love thee, and all that. And so it’s as much for me as for you that I offer the suggestions below for discovering, or rediscovering, what it is about Beijing that makes her so worthy of love. Try it. At the very least, the ten steps I’ve outlined may serve as a prophylactic against depression. There’s no better time for 
falling in love with Beijing than this, the fall – the only truly glorious 
season, with its clean, cool air, bright sunny days and crisp evenings. If you can’t see it in the fall, you might never find Beijing’s beauty. But if you can, then the passion you develop now should carry you through the bitter cold of her winter, the choking dust of her spring, and the stifling heat of her summer.

1. Make friends with real Beijingers

Lazy, prideful, garrulous, hopelessly addicted to politics and punditry, so the capital’s denizens are satirized elsewhere in China. Few Beijingers would object to this caricature. The city’s full of real characters, all earthy wisdom and potty-mouthed poetry. There is a bravery about them that I’ve always admired, the way they just don’t take shit lying down. Their nonchalance in the face of dizzying change betokens a basic constancy of character. And there’s the Beijing dialect, music to the ear of the connoisseur of Mandarin. Spend enough time with them and you’ll understand their open disdain for anyone not from Beijing.

2. Wander the hutongs

The labyrinthine warrens of central Beijing are disappearing fast, so explore them while you still can. Here you’ll find the distilled essence of Old Beijing, where life moves at its own, languid pace and remains largely untouched by the march of progress outside the alleys. Duck into the alleys of the Qianmen neighborhood, the hutongs by Houhai and the other central lakes, or those north of Dongsi and lose yourself in another world.

3. Watch the city wake up

Beijing is an early riser, and watching her come to life in the early 
morning is essential to understanding her rhythms. Watch the folks doing tai chi in the parks, the shopkeepers sweeping their front stoops, the youtiao vendors heating up their deep-fry woks, and the old codgers settling in on the sidewalks with their birdcages, chess sets and long pipes.

4. Eat your way down Ghost Street (策街)

The culinary delights of the entire Middle Kingdom can all be sampled along Dongzhimennei’s 24/7, two-kilometer-long restaurant row. Find out why Beijing stands to eclipse Taipei as Asia’s destination of choice for the discerning diner. Sample this season’s flavor-of-the-week, the absurdly spicy Sichuanese offering shuizhu yu, which took the town by storm this summer.

5. Bike the city by night

Free of the noise, the careening minibuses and the horrendous car exhaust, the streets of Beijing are genuinely lovely late at night. Cycle through the Legation Quarter, through the midtown hutongs, or around the moat of the Forbidden City and feel an exhilarating freedom impossible to get in daylight hours.

6. Walk the Wild Wall

There’s a lot more to the Great Wall than Badaling, Mutianyu and even Simatai. In recent years, a whole slew of Great Wall sections have been opened to tourism, and most of them haven’t suffered yet from zealous, charm-wrecking restoration and or been inundated by tour buses and 
aggressive souvenir hawkers. Get yourself a driver and a newish map of the area, and try spots like Huanghuacheng, Lianyunling, and Jinshanling. The Yanjing range north of town offers great mountain biking, too.

7. Soak in some culture

Art loves adversity, and with its foul weather, censorious authorities, tough markets and tougher critics, Beijing has nurtured quite an art scene. Make the most of it: get out and see the art shows and the plays, the dance performances and the symphonies (check out the concert hall at Zhongshan Park, which holds regular classical performances in a lavish auditorium).

8. Rock out with the local talent

Beijing has by far the most active and creative rock music scene in China, and clubs like Rhine Sound Stage, Get Lucky and Youxi* sport excellent sound systems and regularly host live shows featuring some of the better acts in town. The unbridled passion of the young rock fans is really something to see.

9. Find hidden treasures
The city is full of amazing sites that remain virtually undiscovered by tourists: temples, pagodas, cathedrals, all manner of old buildings. Some months ago, I pedalled down an alleyway just south of the Temple of Heaven’s west gate and discovered the decrepit, unrestored Imperial Music Conservatory. The flagstones of its courtyard lay beneath a century of dust, and someone had etched 此处”泄 ci chu you gui (“there are ghosts here”) into the faded vermilion of one of its gates.

10. Dig the Dirt Market

The city abounds in steals and deals, and not just on ersatz North Face jackets. Make an early-morning trip to the Panjiayuan antiques market part of your weekend. Or explore Guwancheng – Beijing Curio City – right around the corner, where a friend of mine recently bought an enormous pair of wooden city gates from Shanxi, now proudly displayed in her 
apartment. And ask that carpet-collecting colleague of yours to introduce you to some of the better dealers in town. Or check out some of the 
enormous classical Chinese furniture warehouses on the city’s outskirts.

These days she’s been getting tarted up, getting ready to entertain come 2008, with a makeover and a crash-course in etiquette. That’s all fine and good, but honestly it’s the very things that other people find so objectionable that I find so dear: her tempestuous, quarrelsome nature, her obstinacy, her rough edginess. It’s not just her quaint charms – the old guys kibitzing around a chess game, the pigeon-whistles, the clacking of the knife sharpeners who roam the hutongs. It’s the odd things I’ve somehow invested with meaning, like Zhang Dali’s ubiquitous graffiti face profiles, the primitive silhouettes sprayed on walls or the sides of a buildings all over town and which, every time I spot one, still give me a little thrill.

It may take some time. But as you come to love Beijing, and you will find that she amply rewards those who take the time to discover her charms.

[* All three clubs have since closed.]

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