If life is a box of chocolates, then China is a bowl of olives. That first olive you bite on – the taste isn’t particularly pleasant. But it’s different to anything you’ve tasted before. You’re not sure if you like it or not. You have to try another. Still not sure? China, like the olive, is perhaps something of an acquired taste.
The Capital airport is vast, new. Modern and shiny. A good first impression. The queue to get through immigration took longer than usual, but we were making use of the newly increased 240 hour transit visa. It was as straightforward as I’d hoped it would be. Arriving in from one country, and departing to a different country? Check. Doing that within 240 hours? Check. On the list of approved countries for this visa? Check. Got the flight booking on your phone that they can see? Check. Fingerprint. Ink stamp. Sticker. Outta there.
The streets of Beijing are mostly drab. Row after row of vast, bland identikit concrete residential blocks. The near silence at street level is surreal – virtually every car is electric. It’s all quite clean. Maintained. Incredibly busy. We bailed out of our taxi for our Holiday Inn half way between the city centre and the airport.
Everything is different. But everything just works. They make Apple products here. They’ve clearly learned. And despite a somewhat negative reputation, Beijingers are pleasant enough. Why shouldn’t they be? The metro system was clean and easy to use. And I soon got used to the essential Alipay app.
We did a two day tour. Forty-eight hours of following a flag. Temples, parks, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. At the end of both days we were dropped off at the Hutongs, possibly our favourite bit of the city. The ancient heart of Beijing. Or Peking. Or Shuntian, depending on how far back you want to go. Our guide Rocky had the irritating habit of stopping the eight person group at every site to take lots of photos of everyone.
I thought I knew why. At the end he foolishly confessed. He announced that he’d been told this is the way to get a big tip. I gave him a very small tip. He looked at it, puzzled. But what about the driver, where was his tip, he asked? He didn’t like my reply. That was for the driver. I left him in his state of becoming ever more puzzled and went into the hotel. But I did keep one of his photos. Perhaps I was too mean. He was a good guide, beyond the photo scam.
The group was an interesting bunch. Me and the Mexicans. An Aussie girl. A German bloke. I teamed up with him, to discuss the war. It’s what we Brits and Germans do. A cheerful and pleasant Asian American redneck with little self awareness. A mother and daughter, Chinese Americans. They emphasised their Chineseishness. Who wants to be an American American abroad in 2025?
Americans are asking themselves if they’re the bad guys. Hilariously, the Chinese are asking themselves if they might suddenly be the good guys. Tiananmen Square, unfair trade practises, internal repression, international spying, accusations of genocide against the Uyghurs – poof! All gone, just like that. Blown away by Hurricane Donald. All those institutional crimes just whitewashed orangewashed in an instant. I bet they can’t believe their luck.
The German was sceptical. But hey, the English and Germanic peoples were brothers-in-arms for centuries until the latter all went a little bit Nazi, and the former found themselves in bed with Stalin. War makes for odd bed-fellows. But when push comes to shove, the ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ will always hold true.
I don’t know exactly how this spat between Donald and Xi will end. I think they are both equally happy to inflict unlimited pain on the folk they claim to represent. I suspect that Xi will be able to cope with the public pushback far better. He doesn’t have mid-term elections to worry about. You’ll hear the guttural laughter from Beijing all the way in LA and San Francisco if Donald runs the country into the ground so hard the Democrats find themselves with a super majority* in the Senate. Alliances will be important. If I were a Western European leader? The name of the game of politics is to work out where something is headed and get to the destination first. Head east…
But I do know that I liked Beijing. It’s busy and weird and often plain bananas. Its history is colourful and fascinating. Its present is a modern marvel. I look forward to visiting again to see how the future pans out. To tide me over till then, I watched the 1987 Oscar winner, The Last Emperor. How had I not seen it before? What a film, what a story, what a life. Like the humble olive, I found China to be really rather moreish. I have acquired the taste.
* Unlikely. But you never know…
The Mexile 