When
the Heat Beats Down on Beijing
The rising temperatures combined with the humidity
and pollution don’t so much as envelop
as throttle China’s capital at this time of year.
In Beijing, winter is cold and dry and long. Spring
comes and goes in the blink of an eye, and summer returns with a glorious
vengeance. Temperatures rise towards 40 degrees as the weeks pass. Expats gather in beer gardens, to bask in the
long awaited sun. Chinese ‘beauties’step out gingerly into the day, umbrellas
clutched to protect them from the dread of tanned skin.
Migrant workers work hard, and long, constructing
the new China, in all its strange and often ugly beauty.
This summer, the foreign – ‘alien’, in the language
of government officials – community is
feeling a little unwelcome. An official
‘one hundred days’ of check-ups began a few weeks ago, specifically in relation
to visas, housing registration and work regulations.
All foreigners in Beijing need to have the correct
visa and have to register their address with the local Public Security Bureau
upon arrival in the city. Officials have declared that they will be
stopping foreigners in the street to
enforce these laws - in bars, in hotels, in shopping malls, or wherever they
may spend their time - and have advised
that passports and housing registration paperwork should be carried at all
times.
No-one really knows how rigorously this campaign
will be pursued over the hundred days. Smoking bans and anti-prostitution
campaigns are two examples of government-led campaigns that have been routinely
announced and apparently then abandoned. Smoking and prostitution continue to
be as integral to Beijing life as roast duck and dumplings.
Neither does anyone really know why the campaign was
announced. The dispute with the Philippines, perhaps? The publicity surrounding
the death of a British businessman and alleged links with power struggles going
on within the Communist Party? The much publicised recent incident in Beijing,
in which a British man was filmed assaulting a young Chinese woman and then
being beaten by a group of Chinese? The fall-out from the blind Chinese
activist’s escape from detention, and eventual flight to America? Like the recent
campaign to put Beijing’s public toilets to a two-flies maximum test – which
sounds both difficult to manage and a little unfair on flies – no one quite
knows why.
The visa campaign may be simply a symptom of China’s
ongoing attitude towards the wider world and foreigners on its turf – one
that’s been described by commentators as a strange mix of a superiority and
inferiority complex. It’s a love-hate relationship, some say, within which both
the Chinese and foreigners, to varying degrees, play out their roles.
If news of an anti-foreigner campaign, including
home visits and hotlines by which local Chinese are encouraged to inform
officials about ‘suspect’ foreigners, gives the impression that foreigners live
oppressed lives under the iron fist of Chairman Mao’s legacy, then it is a
false one.
In Beijing, almost anything is acceptable, as long
as it is done ‘quietly’, and the right price is offered - or the right
relationship cemented. The Great Firewall of China, as the internet censorship
is known here, can be overcome by purchasing a VPN to throw an IP address out
of China. So the daily Facebook fix, should it be
required, is still available at a small cost.
Most of the pressures under which Chinese people
live – fear of the future, including retirement and health costs, the complex
set of relationships in China that often determine life chances, rising
property prices, low incomes, distrust of the political and legal framework,
the pace of development and its impact on families and communities – are not
factors which impact directly on ‘aliens’ living here.
The living remains relatively easy for many expats
in China and the huge pool of migrant labour in Beijing means that what might
be perceived as indulgence elsewhere can be part of everyday life. Want someone
to clean cook and wash for you? A foot massage by a pretty girl from Sichuan?
Fancy having someone to drive you around, perhaps, or walk your dog while you
feast on a rare dish from Yunnan in a local restaurant? The number of migrant
workers, combined with no safety net and the apparently value-free pragmatism
of many Chinese, means that many foreigners can, in effect, create their own
menu of weekly services to get them through the day. As, indeed, can, and do,
the newly rich Chinese.
Through the eyes of China’s poor and disconnected -
or even the new middle class, which is able to buy as many iphones as it likes,
but not to choose it’s leaders - how does contemporary China present itself,
and if blame is to be apportioned for any shortcomings, at whose door? The
absence of any real means by which blame or protest may be focused internally,
means that the foreign community can become a target, especially when
encouraged by the state-controlled media.
Where does all this leave foreigners in Beijing, and
China more generally? Wiser men, and
women, than I may speculate, but barring another Boxer Rebellion or Cultural
Revolution, and assuming continued economic growth, foreigners will no doubt continue
to arrive on Chinese shores in search of opportunity, adventure, and
indulgence. The messy business of how those ‘aliens’ interact with and are
received by China may continue to tie up
observers and government officials in the most complex of knots
for some time to come.
Looking back,
www.chinasmack.com
has some wonderful but achingly sad images – of illustrations created in the
aftermath of 1949. They looked to the future – to now - and anticipated a
wholly different China to the one which both locals and foreigners now
experience.
Peter Sampson has lived in China since 2009. He
first visited Beijing in 1992, and really didn’t know what to make of the
city.
His first published article, in 1993, was for The
Guardian G2 – ‘My
Time’ – about his experiences as a Prison Officer in the UK.
Peter was published in The Birmingham Post print
edition in 2011: ‘Letter From Beijing’.
He has also written occasional pieces for The
Stirrer and The Birmingham Press online, including: ‘When
I Think of England’, ‘Chinese
Crackers’ and ‘If
I Don’t Know You, You Are Like Air’.
His photographs taken around Beijing can be viewed
at http://ptsimages.crevado.com/#56172 and www.ptsimageseast.crevado.com
Excellent piece, Pete, me old China. Fascinating portrait of a land in flux.
ReplyDelete