It was a beautiful spring morning. The ample sunshine warmed me from the brisk breeze that swept through Tian'anmen Square. I've always enjoyed watching the numerous flags in the square flap in the wind, but on this day they weren't the only thing flapping.
Shadier folks in the news business follow the "if it bleeds it leads" credo.
After all the years I have spent straddling Chinese and Western spheres in Beijing - snacking on sketchy street food like a local or hunting down the perfect French manicure like a picky New Yorker - you would think I've gotten used to the cross-cultural complaints.
Why I am not going to the Shanghai Expo or anywhere close to it
"#$%^&," a taxi driver grumbles as he gestures toward a driver that just cut him off.
Ever since I turned 20, my teenager cousin seems to have developed a problem with my age. "How old are you?" is the question she deliberately asks every time I meet her during the Spring Festival, and I could hear the stress on the word "old".
With trees budding, longer evenings (and sunny ones too) and milder climates finally gracing the capital, it's a perfect time to hop on a bike and go for a ride.
The latest studies done by Beijing-based Horizon Research Group paint a grim picture of the capital's weekday rush hour commute. Beijingers spent an average of 62.3 minutes every day in 2009 commuting in rush hour traffic, up 7.3 minutes from 2007 (without gridlocked traffic, the average commute would be about 40 minutes). This year Beijing had about five hours of daily congestion, compared with three and a half hours in 2008. Traffic jams cost residents an average of 335.6 yuan every year, more than any other large Chinese city.
Coming from Shanghai and currently working in Beijing, I often feel unjustly treated when I hear people speak ill of the Shanghainese, as I feel myself different from the stereotype.
Is Beijing already an "international city"? There are, no doubt, hundreds of scientific and pseudo-scientific cultural factors that those who ponder this question will draw on to provide a reasoned answer. The short answer, at least statistically, is seemingly a resounding no.
There's been quite a bit of hand-wringing over the decline and fall of the Nanluoguxiang scene. It's a pity, but so are death and taxes, and all three are equally inevitable. The half-life of a city hot spot lasts at most two years, and Nanluoguxiang is well past its 2006-08 heyday. In any event, the passing of Nanluoguxiang bodes no lasting harm to Beijing's cultural identity.
Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a dream" speech has to be one of the most inspiring but overused speeches of all time. Nowhere is this truer than among English learners in Beijing.
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