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"In the morning, it is about buying breakfast from vendors with a pot of soybean milk and a basket of dough fritters hanging from their shoulders.
"Beijing is not about designer-clad white-collar workers rushing to and from work, it is about old folks on wooden stools wearing white singlets, with a palm-leafed fan under the old plane trees.
"Beijing is not about modern apartments that cost 50,000 yuan a square meter, it is about crowded courtyard homes with a cheerful community of families living together.
"It is not about shutting yourself away from the world with headphones and the latest playlists downloaded from the Web, it is about holding an old-fashioned radio playing Peking Opera in one hand and a warbling bird in a cage in the other.
"There are no more Beijingers in Beijing. Where have they all gone? Beijing is now a multinational cosmopolis, and the Chinese accents are from every province but here.
"Beijingers are homeless now. While flocks of migrant workers return home in planes, trains and cars during the Spring Festival, where can we go when we are homesick?
"Please don't call it Beijing anymore. Just call it The Capital City."
Progress is bittersweet, and old Beijingers like the spouse and my mother-in-law are paying the price by seeing their home city torn down and rebuilt every day.
It is a displacement that is hard to reconcile, especially when it comes to a city so entrenched in tradition and history.
Home is where the heart is, and trite though that may seem, it may be the only recourse for a community that has been forced to assimilate, and migrate, and learn to live with memories of those good old, bad old days.
On a lighter note, those who really want to meet a true-blue Beijinger should simply hail a cab. Most of them hold a local household registration and possess a willing tongue and acerbic wit.
While we know all cab drivers from London to Timbuktu think they are experts on every subject, the Beijing cab driver is sincere in wanting to educate passengers on the inner machineries of his government. It's his city, it's his capital. Listen, and learn.
