scribbler at large

It’s May, which is technically within the boundaries of spring, but in April the days started heating up, and right now Beijing feels like high summer in Massachusetts. Now that we’re approaching a full year of living here, I can say with data to back myself that spring is my favorite season. The flowers here have implausible petal volume and are vibrant to the point that I must touch them to prove they’re real. I keep finding pockets of flowers in odd places—planted in a bleak patch of dirt in front of a department store, or hanging over the street with scooters nicking the petals as they whiz by.

Beyond flowers, the leaves on the trees in our neighborhood are an almost supernatural green, and the frogs that live in the manmade river near our house are real superbassists at night. Pair these things with the decent air we’ve been breathing, and going for a walk makes for enjoyable sensory overload.

Even the airport expressway gets flowers.

In case you missed this on my instagram feed, back in April the air in the city was filled with floating white fluffy things. They flew into my mouth many a time, and ended up embedded in my hair and in the kimchi for sale at the wet market. Apparently this faux snowstorm is thanks to thousands of poplar trees planted around the city. The white fluff is some kind of “tree mating” side effect that happens around the same time every year and lasts a couple of weeks.

We’d heard that, in addition to white fluffy things, dust storms also blow into Beijing from the Gobi Desert in the springtime. But when we woke up one morning last week to an Air Quality Index of 896 (which is colossally high), fuzzy yellow skies, and high winds, it took me a minute to realize what we were looking at. The sand blew through the city with serious force for just over a day, after which the skies cleared and we danced (…walked) in the scrubbed-clean air. No surprises here: dust storms are not fun, even though they sounded kind of cool to me. That’s thanks in part to the Mandarin word for dust storm, which is pronounced shah-chen-bow (sounds kind of exciting right?)

Speaking of wind, another distinctive stamp of spring in Beijing has been construction, which is happening at every, single turn. Questionable worksite safety habits combined with high winds = one of my greater current fears. In recent weeks, there have been several injuries (even a death) caused by wind-blown projectiles—so if you see me wearing a helmet on the sidewalk, just wave and act normal.

Temporary living quarters for construction workers.

Construction here isn’t the orange cone, beeping machinery, unionized affair you might see on Interstate 90. For example, the building next door is under construction and before the project got fully underway, temporary housing for the workers appeared in the parking lot. Now, on my way to the wet market or the subway, I walk by a flimsy mini apartment building that’s about the size of two trailer homes stacked on top of each other. Windows on both sides of the “building” show tiny rooms with bunked beds inside. These workers are sometimes jackhammering or looking at blueprints at 11PM, and they’re always up and working by the time I leave the house. A guy in a hardhat is usually posted outside these living quarters in what I assume is some kind of security capacity, and he sometimes says “hello” in English when I pass on by.

The oddest construction method I’ve seen is spearheaded by the city, and begins with a neatly stacked tower of bricks on the sidewalk—a warning sign. If you’re a business owner and find one of these brick-stacks in front of your building, a cloud has probably just descended on your future. City workers use those bricks to completely block off the entrance to unwanted establishments—meaning the front door will no longer be. The windows are usually spared, although they sometimes get a set of bars screwed over them.

This wall of windows used to be a wall of windows AND doors, with front stoops, signage, and even some merchandise displayed out front.

Once the bricksmanship is finished, the freshly installed wall (that used to be on the sidewalk) gets parged and painted, and all traces of the construction that just took place are erased.

When this all began in March, I went out to buy a bottle of wine and found myself standing in front of a wall where the booze store used to be. The light was on inside, but there was no way to get in. Was I lost? Early onset Alzheimer’s? I looked up the street to make sure I was in the right place, and saw a wall with windows and no doors where a bunch of eccentric business fronts had been a few days before. Holy crazy pills moment.

Another wall that appears 100% normal, The door used to be between the two windows in the middle of the photo. You can see that the resident tailor has put signs up in the windows to tell customers how to get in touch.

I eventually noticed a little sign sticking out of the window with the name of the store on it and an arrow pointing towards the back of the building—a.k.a. enter from the rear. A week later, I took a Beijing newcomer to the wet market, and afterwards tried to show him a great snack spot, but lo, twas also bricked up—although again there was no evidence of a construction scuffle. In truth, I’ve only seen this kind of construction underway once, and this is what it looked like:

I even noticed that the city crews build a curb in front of the businesses, further discouraging customers (there’s nothing to see or buy here, folks!)

New curb (businesses are to the right, FYI). Yes, that is a "red carpet" indicating that customers should still feel welcome.

Where once there was a curb cut, now there's continuous curb—note the discrepancies between old curb and new in the photo below.

Another bricked up business, with the curb cut filled in for good measure.

The point of all of this, I’ve read, is either to 1) push out unsavory businesses that give the neighborhood a bad name, 2) to shut down unlicensed operators, or 3) just to makeover a street in the interest of peace, quiet, and aesthetic pleasure. Maybe it's all three of these, and it just depends on the building. Most of the businesses that get sealed are hole-in-the-wall-ish, and new/shiny/clean is more appealing to the people in charge. In general, this method sprains my American brain—it's painfully labor-intensive, simultaneously ruthless and indirect. But it's fascinating to watch businesses work around this problem—no door? Use the dang window, man.

This restaurant without a door is always packed.

When you’re living in a foreign city, the dismay of watching standby stores and restaurants disappear can be acute. Some of those locations are hard-won, and (if you’re me) you feel like a real boss for finding them in the first place. But over the past month, our neighborhood and others have been hit with loss after loss—that amazing hand-pulled noodle place, the imported craft beer store, and the bootleg dvd store are all either gone or doing business through the window. To prevent future grief, I’m purposefully imagining scenarios in which everything I know and love has disappeared. Another sure-fire way to keep my own disappointment in check is to imagine the impact these closures have on the business owners themselves. Yeah. Perspective: regained.

Bao still avalable—don't mind the window bars.

Another freshly painted wall with no doors.

The great thing about Beijing, though is that there’s always something new popping up around the corner. We may be wondering what the hell happened to the newsstand that used to be on the sidewalk across the street, but there’s a new, awesome Japanese place down the street that makes up for the disruption of our routines. Get over it, dudes (says Beijing), we’re all about change here.

A final standout feature of this spring is the new bikeshare craze. If you live in a major city in the US, you’re probably familiar with this concept—you pay some money to have access to bikes parked around your city. Here, all you have to do is download an app with which you can unlock bikes and drive yourself wherever you please for the price of 1 yuan (aka, less than 20 cents), also paid for via phone.

...and a different brand.

At first, riders were allowed to leave their bikes wherever they wanted instead of bringing them to roost at designated locations (apparently you can locate bikes near you with your phone). But the biking fad exploded at epic speed, and where there was once one company, there are now four or five, and now bikes are parked everywhere, clogging the sidewalks.

These vans drive around collecting bicycles and redistributing them around the city (as far as I can tell).

Thanks to the raging volume, it looks as though the “leave your bike wherever you want” ways are behind us, and there’s at least some regulation as to where you can park your ride—the city has painted squares on the sidewalks for that purpose. The rate at which this new thing took off was incredible, and has left my mind spinning about the mysterious ways of this massive city.

In summation, spring is an awesome time to be in Beijing—especially if you’re wearing a hardhat. If you’re planning a trip (to visit me, obviously) you should think about springtime! And also fall (second best).

Now that most of the symptoms of rebirth have come and gone, I’m bracing for the crushing heat I remember from last summer, dodging bloodthirsty mosquitoes, and scoping the spots where I can take cover when the heat gets to be too much.

Thanks for listening, friends! I leave you with this: