New and old Beijing

China and Beijing are busy preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympics, so Ben Brazil went to Beijing to check out the scene. He discovered a fascinating city balanced on the edge between modernity and tradition and then wrote about his experiences for the Washington Post.

Construction cranes perched on the skyline like flocks of gargantuan, robotic flamingos, and the air was sepia-toned with smog and dust. Walking Beijing’s expansive avenues, widened under Mao Zedong, I felt a heavy sense of anomie.

In part, the feeling came from the city’s sheer size. Beijing municipality, which includes rural and urban areas, is bigger than Connecticut. The city’s urban core and inner suburbs are about the size of New York’s five boroughs, but with much more limited subway service.

Yet I quickly discovered that no city moves so quickly between massive and modest, between anonymous and intimate. On my first day, for example, I drifted south from the vast, gray expanse of Tiananmen Square into the narrow hutongs, or alleyways, of the Qianmen district.

Immediately, the traffic noise faded. Low, gray-walled courtyard homes lined lanes that were often too narrow for cars but dotted with decrepit bicycles. Through an open door, I glanced at a group of friends hunkered over a board game. Farther on, meat sizzled over small braziers, its aroma mixing with a less pleasant sewer smell. A cat crept over a rooftop.

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