Beijing could be addictive

“Beijing is addictive”, the sexy editor of That’s Beijing told us in a keynote speech for our study abroad program. Thirteen years ago he arrived in Beijing like us, young, ambitious and most importantly culture-shocked in a study abroad program. Now, his baby-face remained despite efforts to disguise it with mustache, but he has become the top-shot for the chic and hip magazine that every expat in Beijing reads. He spoke of riding bicycles to the first McDonald’s and his old office that used to run in a dingy dark room. He has Beijing figured out, both the bars that only foreigners frequent and the tea houses that Beijingers love to go. After all he climbed to the editor’s chair by free-lancing for expat entertaining magazines. In a crisp white shirt and with Chinese facial features, he might blend in with the rest of the white-collared office workers of Beijing. But somewhere in the harmoniously chaotic hair, in the soft and open tone, and in the speech that is organized on several pages but spoken so effortlessly, his Texas charm was like Redbull and vodka. This was a great energy boost to me, who being jetlagged and sick from the air pollution, was getting annoyed already. He reminds you to take a chill pill, enjoy it and immerse in the culture.

Innuendos and jokes aside (which were many and made the audience laugh and seemed to dissolve the generation gap), he brought up the tides of development in Beijing. In the decade that he has been here, Beijing built a whole New York City full of skyscrapers and transformed muddy roads to intertwining highways. Beijing is more than colorful and eventful, it is sensory overload. In this city that has as many antiquities as Starbucks, there is always something optimistically new because it is still growing feverishly and has yet to acquire the cynicism of sophistication. A bizarre architectural design may be immediately shot down in a different city for not conforming to building zone policy or disrupting the city landscape. Here in Beijing, the highways are lined with high-rise buildings that look like experiment labs of various European architectural schools. Many foreigners are riding the waves and trying to take advantage of the unrefined if not almost nonexistent regulations. I thought he finished his speech splendidly by noting that this is a city of 15 million humanity, not a social experiment.