Snapshots of the Middle Kingdom
Oct 26th, 2008 by Michael Max
Xinzuobiao is a vertical community just out past the Fang Zhuang exquisite food street; where the towering new China bumps up against city peasant markets, broken pavement, dust and Soviet era utilitarian boxes of concrete. The subway with its new Olympic induced lines flow new underground rivers of people as the roadways triple park themselves into an endless traffic jam of new car prestige. Xinzuobiao is where I’ve found a short term apartment while the publishing company here in Beijing and I decide if we want play together for the next 6-12 months
Traffic through out China flows according to the rules of mass and momentum where the bigger vehicle has right of way, and streams of turning cars will not be deterred by the color of the traffic light. There is,however, a curious phenomenon where the gathering mass of pedestrians will overtake that of the cars. It takes just one person, like feeling into the right location of an acupuncture point, to walk into the space of traffic that tips the balance and turns lose the human tide.
.
The lingering slow autumn blew away overnight into a clear skied chill that by evening had the piecing reminder that Beijing winters are cold to the bone. Sudden and abrupt as a stubbed toe, the season turns now turns cold.
…
On the fast train headed to Nanjing. Across the aisle happen to be a couple guys from Seattle. They are here with a team of Chinese and Germans working on green environmentally sustainable communities of 250,000 to one million. Stuff we talk about as being economically “unfeasible” have ALREADY been done here. Communities that are built to be BOTH environmentally green and economically sustainable; they are actually doing it here. Oh, and by the way, China is the world’s leader in manufacturing wind turbines for generating electricity. There might be a day soon, very soon, when we are buying the world’s next major energy source that is not dependent on oil. We will be buying it from the Chinese. It is a sobering thought that the inventiveness that has for so long been associated with America, is now being cultivated in the East.