Beijing’s Hutong

2 min read

Beijing, which epitomizes everything that is going on in cities throughout the country, is a city which is steeped in tradition and yet hurtling frenziedly towards Modernity, whose narrow alleyways in the hutongs are surrounded by ultra-modern motorways and gardens which are magicked up in an instant by labourers slaving away like ants. One morning recently, when we were on our way to our daughter’s school, they were just getting started on clearing the ground for a garden at the side of the main road. By the evening, on our return, the garden was already finished as if it had always been there. That is how China is, that is how it builds its skyscrapers and roads(the map of Beijing gets updated every few months), at a crazily dizzy pace. that is how it is in Beijing, Shanghai is even more modern, and Canton is beginning to compete with Shanghai, in spite of the pockets of poverty and backwardness which are till in evidence.

Viaduct construction

Construction workers

You could say that china gives the impression of a nation which is under siege from itself, proud of its traditions dating back thousands of years but at the same time yearning to outdo the West just where the West has always outdone China: in the symbols of Modernity. The tranquility and beauty of its palaces and temples are nowadays disturbed, threatened, cornered no less, by traffic, pollution, noise and thousands of tourists who, doing their utmost to discover this new China-the ‘ must-visit country of the moment-are causing.

these historic gems to lose the very essence of their aura, in the sense which Walter Benjamin bestowed upon this word History has dwindled into a picture postcard, a photographic subject, and has lost the silence; the solitude and the solace which works of art and history have always had the right to consider their due. The Great Wall, recently spruced up, has become tourist merchandise, while Chinas temples are painted in bright colours, to give them a new lease of life which in fact murders the charm of their patina Most resistant to progress is Chinese cuisine: its variety, the esthetics of its presentation, its rituals. a good meal consists of two elements, both of which represent the enjoyment found in eating it: when the meal is over, a tableittered with leftovers, which the guests leave behind without so much as a backward glance, shows how enthusiastically they attacked the various dishes The very fact that there is food left over is evidence that there was plenty of food on offer.