Bright Lights, Big City

The new Beijing airport

November 3, 1999
Web posted at: 3:06 p.m. EST (2006 GMT)

By Kyle and Kelly Westgard

Yesterday we awoke in a two-room brick ranch house. The coal burning potbelly stove, which had heated the room the night before, had long gone out. Outside on the yellow-brown Inner Mongolian grassland, a dozen horses were grazing nearby as a lone shepherd in a hooded, fur-lined People's Liberation Army jacket stood on the horizon tending his flock. The temperature hovered slightly above zero Fahrenheit.

This evening we danced in a bass throbbing, strobe flashing, dry ice billowing Beijing night club with hundreds of progressively dressed, gadget-toting Chinese youth - some with dyed hair. The DJ bounced to the beat, and shouted repeatedly into the microphone, "Clap your hands!" in English.

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Report: Day 23

In the span of two days, following your vote, we have seen countless examples that highlight not only the diversity of modern China, but also the profound way that "things Western" have influenced the face of this country. Marco Polo's Travels tells us that these cross-cultural exchanges have been taking place for at least eight centuries. Have the multitude of Western influences on traditional Chinese society over the years (from cultural to technological) had a positive influence, or a negative one?

Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, is a city caught between the old and the new. How its citizens juggle this balance will determine the city's face of the future.

With the exception of two electric light bulbs and a TV with snowy reception, there was scarcely a Western convenience in the home of our Mongolian hosts. A four-hour drive and a 50-minute flight later, we were in Beijing. The sparkling new Capitol Airport was in its second day of operations and flights were arriving from the four corners of the world.

I used my cellular phone to confirm our ground transportation. Coca-colas in hand, we boarded our bus and headed into the evening rush hour. Mercedes, Toyotas, Fords, Opels, and a jumble of domestic makes jockeyed for position with busses, motorcycles, and bikes as the subway raced below us.

As I watch a white-haired man pedaling a three-wheeled bicycle get honked at repeatedly by teenage taxi drivers, I wondered if all this was what Chairman Mao had in mind fifty years ago when he founded this country based on equality for the proletariat.

We passed a 28-lane bowling alley, a McDonalds, and a bazillion apartment complexes - some over 30 stories high! The irony is that Beijing is not a new city, but one with hundreds of years of history. Many of these apartment buildings are constructed next to 1940s vintage single level homes with tile roofs and courtyards. The city's face transforms constantly. Open-air butchers do business right around the corner from enormous temperature-controlled supermarkets offering imported German sausages and New Zealand kiwis.

On our way to the Forbidden City, we pulled into a Pizza Hut. There we all enjoyed flipping through the hip magazine, BeijingScene.com, deciding what to do for the evening, as we sipped Kenyan java and munched on 'za. Should we hit the International Jazz Festival, the Beijing Opera, or perhaps a game of squash?

I couldn't help but marvel at the new ideas brought in to this country by the foreign movies and diverse entertainment options.

China is in a state of change. Western influences are only one of many factors at work in this process. Good or bad? You decide.

What happened to family-owned general shops that were replaced by convenience marts and department stores with amazing selections of consumer goods? Will people's incomes rise or fall? Will jobs be lost or created? Will families be torn apart as children move to the cities, or will communications networks tie the home together? Will the recent influx of Western ideas mark the dawn of an era of economic prosperity or an end of a classical heritage?

China was a closed society for years - developing and advancing its arts and sciences in relative isolation. Its pictographic (based on pictures) and tonal (different and varying tones) language was unique from any other. The music, architecture, poetry, medicine, religion and history of China are as rich or richer than any other nation. The resulting culture was among the world's greatest. Who knows what would have happened if the Polos and other adventurers and merchants had not crossed borders and opened exchanges between societies?

Bridging Cultures,

Kyle and Kelly Westgard

P.S. We celebrated Colleen's birthday at an Indian restaurant!