Beijing Boyce

Longtime Beijing resident, scuba diver supreme, and journalist Steven Schwankert sent me a personal email last night. I liked it so much, I asked if I could put it on the blog. He agreed. “Tonight is the last night of any Beijing that we ever really knew,” he writes. Here’s why.

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It is a hot and sticky night in August, almost redundant for many places in the northern hemisphere. But it’s different than any other August night because in 24 hours, how hot and sticky and humid and maybe rainy it is will frame how the opening of the Beijing Olympics is remembered.

Rain or the lack of it will determine if there will be any blue skies over Beijing on its first day of competition, whether 90,000 spectators will get soaked during the four-hour opening ceremonies. They may have to sit for hours in that rain, after paying who knows how much for their tickets, and enduring significant security checks. A lot of hopes and dreams and a generation of memories ride on a game of meteorological chance.

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I remember when there were 1000 days left. That seems like a very long time ago, and when the Olympics would start seemed even longer when we were waiting for it. Where all that time went I have no idea.

When you live in Beijing you see a lot of events, more than you would even living in major cities like New York or London. Within a year of my arrival in 1996, China’s leader, Deng Xiaoping died. I found out at about 5:30 the next morning, with a page from my boss. I rolled out of bed, dressed and walked through silent streets to a newsroom that was anything but. That was the first of a string of 12 to 18 hours days covering that event and what it would mean for China’s future.

Four months later, the United Kingdom handed Hong Kong back to China. That was a completely different event. The happening was actually in Hong Kong, but the conquerors here in the capital celebrated just the same. Beijing had beautiful weather; down south, it poured rain. It was a planned event, nothing breaking about it. We watched it calmly dressed in shorts and t-shirts, from the top floor of a hotel facing the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.

The night of the handover, the Square was closed to all but invited guests. But two nights earlier, seizing on cool, clear weather, 700,000 Beijing residents and visitors crowded the world’s largest public space to look at the decorations for the upcoming party. It was less than a decade since over a million people pushed into that same space for an entirely different kind of political event. This one was in every way orderly, a family event, like an evening out on the boardwalk except without rides and ice cream stands.

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Tonight isn’t like that. There are no such gatherings in Beijing. All is calm, I’m not sure how bright it is, but it certainly is a silent night. The visitor, even the resident, would be forgiven for not realizing that the Olympics starts tomorrow. Sure, the banners are hard to miss. The branding, a nice way to say propaganda, is everywhere. The staff and volunteers wear their shirts and badges everywhere, like they are an elite class. But it doesn’t feel like the world’s biggest sporting event is about to happen here. The city feels tense, like it wants this to go well and is hoping that nothing goes wrong.

During SARS, a genuine crisis, it was totally different. For those who read the World Health Organization’s material, or those who just didn’t care, that was the most beautiful spring in Beijing memory. Fantastic weather, no work, no cars, and a revolving party that alighted in whatever bars or restaurants managed to avoid government orders to close.

SARS was the closing ceremonies for Old Beijing. After the emergency was lifted in late June, Beijingers took the money they had saved staying home over the previous three months and went out and bought cars. Over that summer, the traffic mounted, and the pollution followed. Every week, it took a little longer to get where we wanted to go. By the autumn, the crushing traffic that now marks Beijing — and from which we were only partially liberated by subway openings and odd/even days a few weeks ago — had become one of the capital’s new hallmarks.

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Beijing has changed. I used to love Beijing, now I just like it. Beijing had an edge, a feeling that any night out, any excursion off the beaten path might have an uncertain but exhilarating outcome. You went to see a rock show knowing damn well that the police could show up and pull the plug. Those guys wearing sunglasses and smoking in the corner at Afanti — when it had five or six big round tables, not the dinner theater it has become — looked a lot like the two guys sitting in the unmarked Santana outside, who were also wearing sunglasses and smoking.

The history of modern Beijing is an oral tradition, stories of bands we used to see that broke up, playing at bars that are long closed that were on streets that don’t even exist anymore.

Maybe we should have been careful what we wished for since it seems we just may have gotten it. We wanted a decent pizza, and now there are too many places to choose. We wanted faster Internet, a place to drink coffee, and a good bookstore, and now every wannabe scriptwriter is sucking up the bandwidth at the Bookworm. We wanted episodes of Seinfeld; now the DVD guy down the street can sell us the whole set for about what a season would cost overseas. After the Olympic crackdown is over, that is.

Tonight is the last night of any Beijing that we ever really knew. Any thought of “our” Beijing moves to the past tense. It was never really ours anyway, but as it passes into history, like all history that time starts to be forgotten. As of tomorrow, Beijing is high-def, 24 hours, worldwide, whether we like it or not, whether it is ready now or will ever be.

Good night, Beijing.