I knew the moment I woke up I'd spend my day in a haze. The literal haze lingered outside my window, but the haze in my head was thicker. After spending the last four days in a rush of energy and excitement, I stepped back from the thrill of activity to simply observe Beijing. The result was me jotting the beginning of an article:Beijing values facades.
In Tianamen Square, paper-thin mock edifices close off areas from visitors. Near our university, a stretch of buildings looks as if a tornado peeled off the fronts of each store. Swarms of workers attach fresh, shiny entrance ways to mask the leftover shells. Overseers stand at a distance, seeming to hunt for patches of imperfection that would need a swift covering.
Yet as I wrote these sentences, I knew my article itself would be a facade, an easy conclusion. Four days in a country makes no outsider informed enough to judge its values from something as simple as sprucing up for an event as widely viewed as the Olympics. What I value is the people who have shown us all touching hospitality.
Like today, the Olympic organizers treated us all to the most delicious Peking duck dinner!
I'll continue to look and appreciate.
1 comment:
I'm looking forward to seeing more of Beijing as you look beyond the veil of smog and cardboard pretentiousness. Once again I'm reminded by your duck lunch that Peking was the old provincial name for Beijing. Are the name changes, of which this is simply one of many, somehow related to their strong desire to break with past tradition? Let us know what other seemingly century old Chinese traditions are being traded in for something with more 21st century glitz.
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