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College Tribune | September 30th 2008
Features News
Travel
Facing the forbidden city Flyn O’Flaherty has traded the green green grass of home for the almost fictional world of Beijing, and finds the experience every-soslightly mind-blowing Living in Beijing is like a strange piece of fiction – somehow, this could never seem real. The unlikely truthfulness of many of the stereotypes surrounding the Chinese people lends life in the Chinese capital a comic edge. From the overt and unconvincingly amiable bureaucracy to the blithe rudeness and immodesty of the Chinese, everything here could be a parody of the life I had suspected before arriving in Beijing to study for a year. The city itself has a surreal feel - although it is as vast and bewildering as I expected it to be, size is not the most striking aspect of Beijing. Everywhere in the city, there are clashes of old and new, of east and west. Glass and steel monoliths sit atop the shrinking hutongs – the traditional alley neighbourhoods of Beijing. In Tian’anmen Square and the city’s gorgeous Summer Palace park, giant TV screens are crudely juxtaposed against their natural and architectural surroundings. In giant electronics stores in ZhongGuanCun – the socalled Silicon Valley of China - salespeople haggle and hassle to get the most money out of customers, while others scream out offers at passersby through megaphones. Here, like so many other places in Beijing, the Chinese have applied there ways as Western style development encroaches on their way of life. Including these clashes, the most obvious distinction that can be drawn between things in Beijing is quite simple – between built and un-built. The city is in a constant state of flux, with new buildings and undergrounds being constructed at an astonishing rate. Above ground, an arch of the neck will afford a view of the cranes that spot the Beijing skyline; below ground, in Beijing’s ridiculously cheap subway
system – roughly 20c for a ticket –you merely have to look over flimsy wooden boards to see the continuing expansion of the number of lines. In Beijing, breathtaking structures like Terminal 3 of Beijing Airport and the Bird’s Nest are built with the minimum of fuss. When I get back to Ireland and hear of the wrangling and delays surrounding the Lansdowne Road development, I will probably feel a nostalgic longing for the ruthless efficiency of the Chinese. Nestled in the city’s north-western Haidian district, the college, Renmin University, is an island of relative green in the grey sprawl. Like all of the
Beijing is in a constant state of flux, with new buildings and undergrounds being constructed at an astonishing rate. city’s universities, the college grounds are a hive of activity, and are in stark contrast to the tameness of Belfield – especially at night. Walk around Renmin at night and you won’t just see two lads getting sick in a bush; rather, you will be afforded some far more entertaining visual feasts: rows of Chinese women being instructed in a tai chi version of the Macarena; students with actual boom boxes performing some hybrid of break-dancing and roller-skating; old men working out in the playground-like outdoor gyms; and, mostly, an odd procession of latenight joggers avoiding the humidity and smog of daytime Beijing. Like most things here, it is the size of the university campus that is most daunting. In terms of area, the cam-
pus is probably smaller than Belfield, but several things make it appears larger: firstly, there many more highrise buildings on campus here than at home; secondly, there are – by my hardly thorough count – three building sites on campus; mostly though, Renmin is daunting because campus is so packed, and so densely populated. The Chinese students live in crowded dorms, where some tiny bedrooms have 3 bunk-beds. Many of the dorms don’t have their own bathroom facilities, and there are at least two shower buildings on campus. Despite this, most students are very content and there is a lively spirit on the campus. It seems to be a matter of expectation that determines their level of satisfaction – some Chinese we have met here openly guffawed at the idea of having a single room on campus, and openly tell us they think it’s rather silly that we do. The Chinese are, above anything else, very forthright – they would not hesitate to ask what we would perceive as delicate questions, and are very direct and blunt in some of their statements.
This year is, I suppose, eventually what I make it to be: it could be a full Chinese experience or simply just life at any other college. It would be simple to settle into a routine here and ignore the fact that I am in Beijing. At times, the campus can become a cocoon shielding me from the rest of Beijing – a little more palatable and ‘civilised’ than the rest of the city. I could get trapped in a simple triangle between my dorm, the classroom and the canteen. Last week, when I stepped out of the east gate of Renmin for the first time in three days, I had a moment of realisation that I would spend a year in Beijing. The road that lines the eastern side of campus can prove quite interesting for an afternoon stroll, and it’s there that I often realise that I’m somewhere quite different. Mostly, this is because of the parade of Chinese people doing things that I could never imagine at home: people casually getting sick without any heed from passers-by; women hocking phlegm from the depths of their throats; crazy, bloody
bitch-fights in the middle of major crossroads; and, most strangely, toddlers who wear nappies with slits to expedite doing their business doing just that – on anything, including the necks of parents who lovingly place them on their shoulders. Maybe, when I’m not surprised to see things like these, and when I know the area around me better, I can finally say I have settled down in Beijing. But then, I still have to remember that the area around the university is just a tiny bit of Beijing. Just one subway stop away from here is a whole different world that I will probably never know. It is hard to imagine I will ever get a feel for this city, or ever know it well enough to be attached to it. In a city with this many pulses, it really is hard to find a heartbeat. Still, I hope that the whole experience will become gradually less bewildering. Even if it doesn’t, I’m sure it’ll prove to be exciting, enlightening and challenging in some measures – it truly is a great opportunity to study in one of the world’s most rapidly evolving and throbbing urban landscapes.