It is a gargantuan, imperial city, and while there is always a walking path the point of walking is not always clear. “The Middle Kingdom does Dubai.” There is no need to tell me about all the parts of the city which do not look like Dubai, I have seen many of them, and furthermore Dubai has such parts as well.
An iPad, plus Baidu access to Chinese characters, makes it easy to ask questions of strangers. Hardly anyone speaks even minimal English. It is less harried than I had expected. The sky rarely appears, at least in late July. The contemporary art district, 798, is worth more than one visit. I am not interested in seeing the Great Wall. My hotel, rather than having a “Medical Devices” conference, has a meeting on “Australian Property Holdings.”
The main problems here are the air pollution, and that no one, including taxi drivers, seems to know how to get anywhere. The rate of change is high and many people are from the provinces, so there is a real information gap.
The main upsides stem from what scale enables. Even if you have been to many places, Beijing will manage to astonish you.
Most of all, I am struck by how Taiwan is more Chinese than is China.
Heading to China soon – can you elaborate on how Baidu figured in iPad-enabled communication?
They have a translate feature like Google and of similar quality for English Chinese.
Google “Tibet”–can you reach it or has the Great (fire) Wall blocked you TC? Re air pollution–if you live in Beijing long enough your eyes will acclimate to it–same as in LA.
I was driving through Ontario towards Detroit and stopped for coffee at a Tim Horton’s. I asked for a small and, this being well-traveled route by Americans, the guy asked whether I wanted a Canadian small or a U.S. small. I said the Canadian. The coffee was very small. I looked back to the coffee sizes and didn’t see any option equivalent to the Starbucks venti–they topped out at about 16 ounces. I think we still win the gold for massive portions of food and drink, NYC included.
Whoops, posted in the wrong section.
You’re judging the sizes of TH based on a single purchase of a coffee you know isn’t representative and that was meant to be on the very small end?
What does “more Chinese” mean in this context? More colorful temples? Or is there a more subtle metric of Chineseness that you’re using?
On the mainland, they use a simplified version of Chinese characters so Taiwan will seem old-fashioned by comparison. Tourism is big business on Taiwan, and just last year the mainland pulled ahead of Japan to become the number one source of tourists visiting Taiwan. Another draw is the National Museum — Chiang Kai-Shek evacuated nearly the entire collection ahead of the Communists, so if you want to see Chinese antiquities, Taiwan is where you go.
Ooh, simplified vs traditional Chinese writing; absolutely no quicker way to start a vicious argument on the internet than trying to assert the superiority of one over the other on a site with people from mainland and Taiwan/Hong Kong origins. A lesson learned the hard way for me.
erm… it’s not controversial at all. Simplified characters have the same form but can be written with fewer strokes. Simplified means nothing more. You can argue whether you like it or not, or whether some meaning is lost or not, but the term simplified itself is not a claim to superiority.
plus 1
Taiwan’s nation building overplayed the Chineseness and supressed the aboriginal Tawanese culture where it deviated from tradiational China. China itself went through different reinventions that suppressed traditional Chinese-ness: Maoism then the Cultural Revolution and now the turn to attract foreign capital. There’s also the many people from the provinces that Tyler spoke of.
Sort of like how someone from North Dakota might visit NYC and remark that Canada seemed more like America then New York.
Canada IS more like American than NYC.
In Canada you can still buy Big Gulps and large drinks at McDonalds.
___I was driving through Ontario towards Detroit and stopped for coffee at a Tim Horton’s. I asked for a small and, this being well-traveled route by Americans, the guy asked whether I wanted a Canadian small or a U.S. small. I said the Canadian. The coffee was very small. I looked back to the coffee sizes and didn’t see any option equivalent to the Starbucks venti–they topped out at about 16 ounces. I think we still win the gold for massive portions of food and drink, NYC included.
Coffee and milk-based drinks are exempted under NYC’s laws. It only really affects “poor people’s drinks.”
What? They’re getting rid of my 40s?
This is actually a great point. Canada resembles Norman Rockwell’s America much more than America nowadays.
Taiwan (and Hong Kong) retained a lot of traditional aspects of Chinese culture that Chairman Mao tried to stamp out. Feng shui is still pretty big in HK (and still has a presence in parts of southern China thanks to HK) while all of my mainland Chinese friends and associates dismiss the practice as “feudal superstition”. Similarly, people in Taiwan (and South Korea and Japan) typically will consider it to be bad table manners to rest your chopsticks by sticking them upright in your rice because of its resemblence to the incence sticks you burn at someone’s grave. Meanwhile, my mainland friends have either never heard of this, or describe it as the kind of thing their grandparents would have done.
“More Chinese,” I’m guessing, in part, because the Nationalists carted off most of the Forbidden City’s art to Taiwan when things started looking grim in 1948, and because there’s more a culture of cultivating preservation for traditional Chinese history and art in Taiwan than on the mainland (for a country with 5,000 YEARS OF HISTORY!, there’s not so much in the way of historical sites beyond the past century or two). If you’re interested in Chinese history, Taipei is probably a better destination than Beijing — to a person, each of my Taiwanese friends takes a lot of pride in that.
And yes, what Mark says about traditional Chinese characters!
hi,
I love Beijing so much, i just have to comment!
maybe if “Chinese history” is stuff in museums, Taipei may – for the time being – have better collections. but as for actual locations with significance to Chinese history.. maybe Beijing isn’t Xi’an, or Hangzhou, but there are tons of sites either in town or within a day’s drive with original significance to the Ming or Qing states, both of which had their capitals in Beijing. Beyond that time, if you want “Chinese History”, you’re talking about city walls or maybe huge pagodas – the Beijing city walls are basically gone, but there are temple buildings (e.g. Tianning Temple) dating back at least to the Song period, nearly a thousand years ago.
No way can you find that much history in Taipei, sorry!
-andrew
Being “Chinese” is much more than artifacts in a museum; it’s values passed down in families, Chinese medicine, lakes and mountains written about by ancient poets.
Also part of SICK Countries (facebook blockers.. Syria/Iran/China/northKorea)
Ironically my Bible app was blocked there two weeks ago… but a local friend in 7th grade had ‘The Bible’ as required reading for school. (couldn’t figure out what version it was…. I’m guessing Jeffersonian)
You also have to show your passport in order to get into a English speaking Church (Chinese Nationals aren’t allowed)…
actually my family is western enough, we didn’t have to show ours
“Most of all, I am struck by how Taiwan is more Chinese than is China.”
How so?
It’s a typical, silly, throwaway Cowen comment, in a successful attempt to seem wise and mysterious. I mean, of course China is the most Chinese place in the world. And Taiwan is, by everyone’s definition, part of China. Come on.
“And Taiwan is, by everyone’s definition, part of China.” In what sense of “China”?
I took it as a straightforward commentary on the architecture of Beijing and most of the rest of the rabidly expanding/building Chinese cites. “The Middle Kingdom does Dubai” comment is your clue I think.
Taiwan is the only Chinese state that preserves direct continuity with the 3,000 year traditions of pre-1949 China. In writing, speech, religious practices, public festivals, even food. It is hard to overstate what a huge break Mao’s regime created with the past.
Since most Chinese live in Red China one would probably have to admit that “Chineseness” today is defined by the PRC. But an American, loaded down with preconceptions, probably will find Taiwan more along the lines of what he/she expected “China” to be than the PRC.
I, too would like to know what this means. To me, neither one is very Chinese anymore. But then, the US is no longer very American since Bush, (or is it Obama?) became president.
I actually had the same thought myself after visiting both Taipei and Shanghai. Much of Shanghai is very new, and in a way, all new cities are very similar. There is little that is uniquely Chinese about it. Taipei has much more of a traditional Chinese feel to it (not talking about the script), and more so the rest of Taiwan.
During West Brom’s visit to China John Trewick entered football history by, in reply to a question about the Great Wall, remarking “Impressive, isn’t it? But once you’ve seen one wall, you’ve seen them all!”.
Sure it wasn’t Karl Pilkington?
I’ve seen West Brom defend. What do they know about walls?
“Hardly anyone speaks even minimal English.”
Anyone who is college educated in China can speak English. If you stay places where the Chinese are salaried and educated, like hotels and touristy attractions, you shouldn’t have a hard time getting around. I know you like finding off the beaten path restaurants so this may be what you’re running into. But overall I found China a lot easier to get around in than Japan.
Ditto — @@ 80% of people, esp young people walking around anywhere in BJG where foreigners might be, both speak some English, AND want to speak English to a foreigner
“where foreigners might be” is the key part here. Once you stray, the density of English-speakers declines precipitiously.
Correction, anyone who is college educated has STUDIED English. Whether or not they can actually communicate in it is an entirely different issue.
My experience in China is that hardly anyone speaks English in Beijing and Shanghai, and elsewhere essentially no one speaks English apart from tour guides. Hotel staff may speak some, but it will usually still take some effort to communicate. Sure they all study English in school these days, but the idea that they suddenly found a few million fluent English speaking teachers the day after they decided to make it mandatory in schools is ridiculous.
On the other hand, it seems like nearly everything everywhere is signposted in English, so it isn’t hard to travel around.
The surprising lack of historical sites in China is one reason I’m not particularly interested in visiting mainland China. I would like to get to Tapei one day and see the museum there.
Incidentally, Chinese history itself is one reason for the relative lack of historical sites. The Chinese tended to build their cities out of wood, and the cities kept getting burned down during the collapses of dynasties that occurred periodically. When a new dynasty reestablished unity, they tended to rebuild a new equivalent of the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven and imperial tombs in the new imperial city.
Hence historical minded visitors to China head for Ming constructed Imperial City, Ming constructed Temple of Heaven, Ming Tombs, and even the Ming constructed sections of the Great Wall in and around the second Ming capital of Beijing. Somehow, Beijing avoided being burned to the ground during the transition between the Ming and Qing (too sudden) and between the Qing and the People’s Republic (the people who sacked Beijing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were barbarians who actually valued historical preservation). Otherwise you just have what is left of the tombs of the earlier dynasties.
By contrast, look at Japan where Kyoto and Nara have much older pedigrees.
Wright is right, Japan was way harder. In China, they like to say “Hello!” louder and louder and pantomime whatever it is they want from you. But the college kids, and people in sales generally know a bit more English, but the general population is not so great, especially the recently-moved-from-the-countryside type. I’m Chinese btw and went in July. The air is horribly polluted still and yes, the taxi drivers have no clue where anything is. The biggest reason is because it changes so much, new buildings are everywhere and “behind that big tall thing” means something different every week as buildings go up and come down. Also, they just don’t care where you want to go, that’s YOUR problem. I am suprised that NO CABS carry maps on the car, so you can’t even point to the vicinity of where you want to go after you have carefully researched it on Google. And no, cabbies don’t have GPS or smartphones.
Let China be China;
It is What It is
And Not
What A Western Economist
Thinks It Is
The Great Wall is worth the trip.
Agreed. Great Wall is definitely worth a trip. Not only is the wall itself worth a trip, the trip itself is worth the trip — so you can see some countryside and economic activity outside the city. And if you want to find someone who speaks English, go to a young person. Lots of English with teenagers to thirty-year-olds and lots of eagerness to practice on Americans.
It looks (from the link) that the sky was clear on July 29. You are very lucky. I have not seen that for years during my trips home.
Tyler, you’ve been tricked. According to my Chinese parents, it isn’t that they don’t know where everything is because that everyone is from the countryside. They know perfectly. You can’t live in Beijing without being properly registered resident. If they are taxi drivers, they are simply trying to keep you in the taxi longer by making wrong turns. If they are random local people, they are just trying to get rid of you, since what’s the point of helping a foreigner? In fact, even among Chinese, the people of Beijing are notoriously unfriendly!
Not so sure about that. It’s a huge city and beyond references to ring roads, subway stations and districts in the city, any sort of grid system grid is often interrupted by the various hutongs, gated communities, commercial complexes and sprawling bureaucratic office spaces that make it difficult to get around. As Tyler said, things go up and down so fast that it’s hard to keep track of what’s where. When you give directions on the basis of proximity to gated communities, names of commercial complexes and names of hutongs and nearby landmarks, the fact that people come and go fast and that building go up and come down fast make it tough to stay on top of things. If you spend much time in Beijing you realize that it becomes practical to meet people at a nearby landmark or metro station rather than trying to find somewhere for the first time, unless you have lots of time and patience. You may easily have a hard time finding places unless you have painstakingly accurate directions, and even then finding your way is not a sure thing since the landmark location itself may have moved.
True though, I think the average Beijinger has less time for lost tourists than other areas in China.
798 is definitely worth a second visit. I’ve never been anywhere else like it, at least not on that scale. It’s also one of the few places where I’ve seen a significant collection of decent art in China that strays from traditional forms and yet appeals on both esthetic and intellectual levels. Traditional Chinese art is far too ridged in my opinion and this district provides numerous exceptions to the rule that Chinese art lacks creative innovation.
Economists and their smartass comments and predictions. If there’s one profession more useless than elevator operators (only seen in china), it is economist.
smartass comments …. since there is information ubiquity, and you have an entire internet to allocate your time to, can there be anything more pathetic than people making smart ass comments, in the fine internet tradition of everyone who’s not me is an idiot, about other peoples smart ass comments.
kind of slapping your own face there?
And I’m a chronic offender too, since according to me my smart ass comments are profound observations wrapped in irony.
Where’s the prediction? That was a useless contribution, thanks.
What do Tyler’s comments about Beijing have to do with being an economist? And what prediction did he make?
Surprised to hear complaining about the taxis without any caveat that they are incredibly cheap and clean. But in any case, the way to get around in Beijing is by subway, also incredibly cheap and almost all built within the past few years.
I also do not think it is just scale that distinguishes Beijing, but scale combined with economic velocity and, equally important, with cultural and political displacements lacking in Dubai or in other mega-cities: 1000 years as capital of an imperial culture with very distinctive mechanisms for exercising and displaying its power, 50 years of a reversal of those gears under Mao, and the metropolitanism of an insular nation-state whose regions are the size of countries.
very interesting
orjin krem is beatiful. thanks for sharing
I at first wondered why all my appointments would inform me to “call me then give your cell phone to the cab driver so I can give him directions”, but then I realized very quickly that the cab drivers had only rudimentary grasp of the city. Even major hotels would require the same treatment. When I drove cab here in the U.S. way back in my college days, we had a built in “mapquest” style system linked to the dispatch, that would do GPS based map directions. Given the scale and rapidly changing size of Chinese cities this would be a no brainer. One disappointment and maybe a clue to the problem was the very low prices for cab rides. 20 minute rides spanning tens of miles would come to $6-7 or so. At those rates, cab driving is a low paying profession even by Chinese standards, and therefore likely entry level from the provinces work. It would be interesting to see where it fits into the wage scales, and therefore how transitory the workforce is, impacting information investment.
I have usually told cabbies to go to someplace on the other side of Beijing (often naming the bridge nearest the destination) and they almost always know it. I think the new cabbies go to tourist areas and hotels because they anticipate most of the foreigners will ask to go to the Forbidden City and other obvious places. If they get lucky, the foreigners will ask to go to the Great Wall. On May Day, cabbies come from all the surrounding areas and some literally have no idea where things are. I once got in an argument with a cabbie at Wangfujing, asking him over and over (thinking my Chinese was wrong, words out of order or something) to go to a famous street not far from Tiananmen. He kept saying he didn’t know. Finally I said, how the hell can you not know? And he said, “I’m not from Beijing. I just came here yesterday.”
Yeah, I’m not sure about the taxi comment. First, most taxi drivers are Beijingers (if I chat with them, I usually ask). If you meet someone from the countryside (usually Hebei), they’re being set up in the company through family connection, since taxi companies prefer hiring locals, and taxi driving is considered a pretty good job. Furthermore, in my 3 years of living here, I haven’t run into the problem of cabbies being completely clueless too often. Certainly not for common locations, and even for more obscure ones, if you can give them some general directions beyond the written address, you’re fine. The result is that if you’ve lived in Beijing for a few years and speak at least some Chinese, which describes most taxi riders in Beijing, you don’t have a problem.
I’m surprised what didn’t jump out more was the bigger problem of addresses. Almost no buildings post their addresses, and no one ever uses them for giving directions. It’s not uncommon for buildings to face three different streets, or for many different entrances to lead to different sections of what still is one building. (this is related to the less harried feeling you describe – Beijingers love to fence everything in, leave lots of space between street and building (no land tax), and make small passages and side-streets that no one except local residents know. It keeps pedestrian traffic low, and, for such a large city [and for all the talk of Chinese not understanding privacy], makes Beijing much more private than a city like New York.
Good comment, JSC7,
However, for tourists, it is still advisable to be prepared if planning to use cabs. Get clear written directions from your hotel to give to the cabbies. Also, wise to take a map along with where you are going on it clearly marked. Lots of variability in the quality of cabbies, and they may sometimes take advantage of you if you are a non-Chinese-speaking tourist.
OTOH, nobody on this thread has said boo about the metro system. It is really pretty easy to use, and if one has a good map, one can get to a lot of the major tourist sites within Beijing itself (not the Great Wall or Ming or Qing tombs) using it. This completely avoids all these cab hassles, plus it is cheap.
” Hardly anyone speaks even minimal English.” Can’t think of a more racist introduction except, “Hardy anyone was white.” or is it “White”.
Good lord what a sensitive little child. In what way is this actually racist? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
English is the modern lingua franca, it’s the international language of choice in most places. Backpacking through most of the world when two people meet who don’t speak the same language, their next attempt is generally english. I’ve stayed in Hostels in Ukraine watching French and Germans speaking to each other in English for lack of a better alternative. I’ve found I come across as rude in some international zones asking if tourist industry workers speak English. It’s something travelers would want to know and not at all a given as most Chinese kids I’ve spoken with claim everybody learns some english growing up in school, most just never follow through with it at all or really learn to speak it.
My guess is a fair number of younger Chinese speak minimal English but rather are just uncomfortable not knowing enough.
When I was there in 2002, one of the news items was that English, which was then a compulsory subject for high school students in China, was about to be made a compulsory subject for middle school students as well.
Of course, some students are better at learning than others, so universal English education doesn’t imply universal English skills.
watching French and Germans speaking to each other in English
.
Hard to think of anything more unpleasant than that.
I wouldn’t call it racist, but it’s a bit unpleasant to disparage (even if gently) a foreign population because they don’t speak your language. Are the Chinese disappointed that Tyler doesn’t speak even minimal Chinese?
How do you know he doesn’t? I didn’t see any disparaging. It obviously is an important fact in any description of the city/experience for mainly English-speaking readers.
I <3 Beijing.
Air pollution fluctuates quite a bit in the city. I generally find people's impressions are stilted by the quality of the air during their first day or two in the city.
I've found that people in large countries generally can't speak foreign languages well. Russians are often worse than Chinese, and of course Americans are the most notorious offenders.
Beijing rewards exploration a lot more than many other cities. This has to do with the relative ease of opening and closing a business, and the way it attracts the educated portion China's massively mobile labor force.
Great Wall hikes are nice, Great Wall tours are not.
Beijing has very nice, and under appreciated, parks.
I don't think Taiwan is more Chinese, rather its more self-conscious about its Chineseness.
Surprised at the lack of interest in the Great Wall. One great thing about travel is the opportunity to experience things that one cannot do so adequately through photos or other kinds of secondhand accounts. Food falls into that category, and so do the truly great tourist sites. I don’t think it’s possible to appreciate the Great Wall fully without being there, and I certainly wouldn’t miss on opportunity to see it while in Beijing anyway. When I visited in the 90s, I couldn’t help quoting Nixon: “It is indeed a Great Wall.”
Dude, Taiwan is not more Chinese than China. If anything, it’s more Japanese because of its legacy as part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere & lingering local resentment of the Kuomintang invasion.
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