SimCity China

China is a crazy place. We got here and after driving from the airport to the hotel, the first thing my mom said was "this is totally not what I expected. I don't know what I was expecting, but this isn't it." What she meant was, she wasn't expecting to see huge highrise after highrise lined up like perfectly planted rows of corn. She didn't expect to see traffic jams of brand new cars, VWs, audi's, hondas, bmws. China is truly in the process of developing, and it's doing so at lightening speed, right before our eyes. and the developing has been accelerated by the upcoming 2008 olympics in beijing,which, by law, forces all construction to be done by 2008. and it will be done, because things get done in china. the tour guide said "for the chinese people, nothing is impossible." and that's true.

it seems that two things have helped erase a lot of the historical parts of beijing: progress and the cultural revolution. for practicality's sake...thing have had to be torn down...the hotung style houses and the old city gates torn down to make way for wider highways and taller buildings. and back in the 80s a lot of things were destroyed by the cultural revoltion, which even the government-hired tour guides will admit was a mistake. i have been searching for culture. i told my dad i wanted to get a better feel for beijing. his response was "how can you get a feel for beijing...it's too big for that." i have never been so overwhelmed by the expanse of a place. it's not dense like new york...there aren't people crowded into every corner. it's spread out, but because there are so many people...it's REALLY spread out. it seems like it goes on forever. there are very few quaint parts of beijing, it's all monstrous. picture yourself as one of the characters in "honey, i shrunk the kids." that's what it's like.

everything is new. cars, buildings, roads, even the ancient temples have all recently been restored. this is what gives it a disneyland feel. today we went to the "temple of heaven" which is where the emperor use to go every summer to pray for the country, etc. we walked in and the guy standing next to me asked "what's that smell?" I said it smelled like fresh paint...and it was. they had just finished restoring the temple 7 days ago. the chinese removed every single tile from the roof (and there are a lot of tiles) re-glazed them and put them back. it took over a year. everything was bright and colorful.

another thing i've noticed is there is a separate job for absolutely everything here. there's a guy that gets paid to post the morning paper on these huge bulletin boards all over the city. and other guy wears a red hat and a red banner across his chest and holds a little red flag. he stands at an intersection snd makes sure that pedestrians and bikes stop when the traffic light turns red. there are one or two of these people on every single intersection. not just one side of the intersection...all 8 sides. and they stand there all day. amazing.

tomorrow i'm headed to shanghi. i've heard there is so much money there i will be in awe. imagining anything more shiny and new than beijing is difficult, but i guess "new" and "wealthy" are totally different. we'll see i guess.