the Beijinger

Eight years ago, my band Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn) played at the Snow Mountain Music Festival in Lijiang. The day before the festival kicked off, we sound-checked at the venue, an alpine meadow 45 minutes by car above town. Then we shared a minibus back down to Lijiang with the band Brain Failure, one of China’s best-known Punk bands. At first there was a bit of awkwardness.

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue  from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

September 2002 - I heard an estimate recently claiming there are now a whopping 200,000 foreigners in residence in Beijing. I don’t doubt it: New expat-oriented businesses are popping up like mushrooms, an international school seems to open every year, dui wai apartment complexes and suburban developments break ground practically every week, and the bars and clubs are overflowing with young folk from every corner of the globe. Twenty years ago, besides a cliquish diplomatic corps and a handful of hardened journalists, there just weren’t that many long-term laowai here. Now I’m constantly running into young people who come here just to visit, fall in love with the city and then scheme some way to stay on. Some never leave.

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

March 2007 – They call it “reflexology,” and with brief apology,
I confess I only learned the word quite recently.
What they call it, I don’t care: ‘round these parts, it’s something rare –
A massage where neither party acts indecently.
Here in China, as you know, from Heilongjiang down to Guangzhou,
Or the Lhasa Valley’s Himalayan ice,
It’s hard to find a town where you can’t get your feet rubbed down,
And enjoy it at a bargain-basement price.

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

On the afternoon of September 1, the first gloriously autumnal day of the year, I rode my e-bike eastward along the North Second Ring Road, admiring the manicured lawns, neatly trimmed hedges, and potted flowers in synchronous bloom that line the roadside.

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue  from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

October 2001 - So she’s not the world’s most beautiful city. Granted, she doesn’t offer much by way of natural scenery, and what little she can boast – the mountains to her north and west – remains obscured most days by the dust and haze that hangs in the air. Her weather could be better and yes, her traffic sucks. Yet in the seven years I’ve lived here I’ve fallen in love with Beijing, irrationally and irretrievably.   

I’m not what you’d call an environmental role model. I have no idea how big my carbon footprint is, but I doubt I’ve shed the wasteful habits learned in 30 years of life in America, so we’re probably talking Sasquatch proportions. Air conditioning, beef consumption, incandescent lighting – my sins against Gaia are numerous.

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

April 2008 – He first arrived in China in the spring of ’98 –
An earnest English major from a flat Midwestern state.
He spent two years in Jilin Province teaching ESL
And through those Dongbei winters he learned Mandarin quite well.
He was fond of all his students, he was fond e’en of the worst,
And he grew so fond of baijiu that he’d down it uncoerced.
But two years in the rust belt had done something to his mood,
And he longed for creature comforts, and he longed for Western food.
So in Chunjie of 2000 he rode hard-seat overnight
And emerged from Beijing Station in the early morning light,
He shuffled with his duffel ‘til he crossed the guojieqiao,
And made his way directly to the nearest Maidanglao.
He checked into a cheap hotel, now sated on Big Macs,
And that night went to Sanlitun to drink and to relax.
The next four evenings found him there, carousing in the pubs
And ogling pretty women in the Gongti-area clubs
Reluctantly he went back north to teaching noun and predicate
And drinking sorghum liquor with his roommate from Connecticut.
He knew, though, deep inside that he was bound for something better
And with courage fueled by baijiu penned a resignation letter.
His students, as you might expect,
were sad to see him go,
And one girl with an unrequited crush especially so.
Despite her maudlin pleas he was determined to take wing,
And leave the teaching life to seek his fortune in Beijing.
At first he polished English for a state-run business mag,
While writing freelance features for a local expat rag.
He wrote for travel magazines and did translation too,
And he tried his hand at fiction,
which (he rightly reckoned) blew.
And somewhere ‘long the way
he started smoking Zhongnanhais,
A habit he’d picked up
those late nights drinking with the guys.
His English took on words
not used by ordinary Yanks,
Like “flat” and not “apartment,”
and “cheers” ‘stead of “thanks.”

“Ich Bin Ein Beijinger” was a magazine column written by Kaiser Kuo that ran in every issue  from October 2001 to October 2011. Kaiser offered one self-proclaimed Beijinger's take on the city that he's come to call home.

August 2007 - Time: 12pm    From: KK
Hey, just deplaned. My bag was last off carousel, now facing a Hongqiao-esque taxi line. Running late, sorry. Can we push lunch back to 1pm?

Tunisia and Egypt – and before them, Ukraine, Moldova, and Iran. Arguments still rage over the impact of social media in these momentous events. Were these “Twitter Revolutions,” as many have been eager to proclaim them, made possible by a new form of connectivity?