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“Beijing Has 20 Million People Pretending to Live Here” (Full Translation)

Translation of “Beijing Has 20 Million People Who Pretend to Live There” (“北京,有2000万人假装在生活”) by Zhang Wumao.

Manya Koetse

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On July 23, Chinese blogger Zhang Wumao (real name Zhang Guochen) posted a humorous yet sharp essay criticizing the status quo of life in Beijing, and the city’s old locals and new immigrants. The article soon went viral and was denounced by official media. Translation provided by What’s on Weibo.

“Beijing Has 20 Million People Who Pretend to Live Here” or “Beijing Has 20 Million People Pretending to Have a Life Here” by Zhang Wumao. Chinese title “北京,有2000万人假装在生活”, original text in Chinese posted by author on WeChat on July 23, 2017.

1

Beijing has no human warmth

Friends from outside the city frequently criticize the people of Bejing. They’ll say that Beijingers have lots of money, but that they show it off in a classless fashion and that they are not hospitable. ‘I’ve come to visit the city, why can’t we catch up!?’, ‘We’ve known each other for years, you can’t even take me to the airport!?’ In fact, Beijingers are not as hospitable as non-Beijingers. Coming to pick you up and giving you a ride, or showing you around the city, are all seemingly simple things that are too hard for Beijingers to do.

Beijing people are busy. They are busy ’til 11 o’clock at night, when they are still jammed on the 3rd Ring Road. The cost of social time in Beijing is really too high – so high that it would be quicker to go for dinner in Tianjin than to go from Shijinghsan (TN: inner district of West Beijing) to Tongzhou (TN: district east of Beijing). Beijing is really too big; so big that it is simply not like a city at all.

So how big is Beijing really? It is equivalent to 2.5 times Shanghai, 8.4 times Shenzhen, 15 times Hong Kong, 21 times New York, or 27 times Seoul.

 

“Beijing is a tumor, and no one can control how fast it is growing; Beijing is a river, and no one can draw its borders.”

 

In 2006, when I came to Beijing, the subway only had line 1, 2, and 13. Now I don’t even know how many lines the Beijing subway has without checking it on Baidu. Ten years ago I took public transportation to search for a job, and refused to go to any interviews of companies outside the 4th Ring Road. Now companies like JD.com, Tencent, and Baidu, are all outside the 5th Ring.

When friends from outside the city come to Beijing, they think that we are near. But actually, we’re hardly in the same city; they might be in China’s Houhai, Guomao, Tongzhou, Shijingshan,.. If you’d look at the time spent in traveling, when people from Tongzhou and Shijingshan are dating, they are basically in a long-distance relationship. When you go from the 5th Ring Road to Yizhuang you could call it an offical trip.

For 10 years, Beijing has always been controlling housing, controlling traffic, and controlling the population. But this pancake is only getting wider and bigger. It has become so big that when a school friend from Xi’an called me to tell me he’s in Beijing, I asked him ‘where in Beijing?’, he told me ‘I’m at the 13th Ring Road.’

Beijing is a tumor, and no one can control how fast it is growing; Beijing is a river, and no one can draw its borders. Beijing is a believer, and only Xiong’an can bring salvation.

Beijingers are not just cool towards people from outside, they also treat each other coolly. Every time an old school friend from outside the city visits Beijing and we have a get-together, they’ll ask: ‘You guys here probably often meet up, right?’. I then say that those few times they come to Beijing, are the only few times we actually meet up.

In Beijing, there’s a mutual understanding when exchanging name cards; if we call each other a couple of times within a year, we’ll consider it a good friendship. If people are willing to come from east of the city to the west to have a meal together, then we’ll be friends for life. The only people we meet every day and have meals with are our co-workers.

2

Beijing actually belongs to outsiders

If you let Chinese people pick one city to visit in their lives, I am convinced the majority will choose Beijing. Because this is the capital, this is where you have Tian’anmen, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and hundreds of big and small theaters. From modern drama to Western or traditional opera, from xiangsheng to skits or Two-people Rotation – people from anywhere in the world can find their spiritual food here. But these things actually have nothing to do with the people of Beijing.

If you step into any major theater in Beijing, you’ll find that six out of ten people are outsiders with an accent and that three of them have just arrived in the city, that there are no fresh artistic young persons. What’s left is one person swiping their phone in the corner; the bored Beijing tour escort.

 

“Going into the Forbidden City, I only see one empty building after the other; it’s less interesting than the lively pigsties we have in my native village.”

 

In the 11 years since I’ve come to Beijing, I have been to the Great Wall 11 times, 12 times the Imperial Palace, 9 times to the Summer Palace, and 20 times to the Bird’s Nest. I feel emotionless about this city’s great architecture and long history. Going up the Great Wall, I can only think of Lady Meng Jiang (TN: 孟姜女, heroine of the Qin Dynasty), it is difficult to feel a sense of national pride again for this world miracle. Going into the Forbidden City, I only see one empty building after the other; it’s less interesting than the lively pigsties we have in my native village.

Upon hearing any mention of Beijing, many people immediately think of the Palace Museum, Houhai, 798; they think of history, culture, and high-rise buildings. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It’s good! Does it make you proud? It does! But you can’t make food out of these things. What Beijingers increasingly feel is the suffocation of the smog and the high cost of housing. They cannot move, they cannot breathe.

3

Beijing Eventually is Beijinger’s Beijing

If you say that Beijing still has this somewhat smoky smell, then this is the smell that comes from the city’s native Beijingers who have been here for generations. It comes from their old bird cages, it comes from their palm leaf fans that cool the air after dinner, it comes from the haughty accents of the taxi drivers…

Old Beijingers are trying to make this city smell alive; they are trying to make the city appear like a place where people live.

 

“If you do not have a five-room house, how can you be calm? How can you breathe? How can you relax and play chess while drinking tea, like the Beijing uncles?”

 

This lively odor of the old Beijing people is passed down in genes, and it rises from the bottom of their five-room apartments. When the white-collar workers from the financial district in west Beijing are immersed in the excitement over their year-end bonuses, the nouveau riche in the south will calmly say they own five-room houses. When the computer programmers in Haidian crack a code and fantasize about being the next Richard Liu, the nouveau riche in the south will still calmly say they own five-room houses. When the media elite in Chaoyang have drawn up a new list and stand before their CBD office window contemplating their life, the nouveau riche in the south, as before, will still calmly say they own five-room houses.

If you do not have a five-room house, how can you be calm? How can you breathe? How can you relax and play chess while drinking tea, like the Beijing uncles?

In Beijing, the migrants who have no real estate from previous generations are destined to be trapped in their house for life. They strive for over a decade to buy an apartment the size of a bird cage; then they spend another decade struggling to get a house that has two rooms rather than one. If that goes well – congratulations! – you can now think about an apartment in the school district.

With a house in the school district, children can attend Tsinghua or Peking University. But Tsinghua graduates will still not be able to afford a room in that district. They will then either need to stay crammed together in the old shabby family apartment, or start from scratch, struggling for an apartment.

4

In 2015, the movie Mr. Six hit the cinemas. In my friend circle, many ridiculed the movie’s character ‘Mr. Six’ for his Beijing air. But I was deeply touched.

After being in Beijing for over a decade, I refuse to go to Wukesong to see the Shougang [basketball] team, I refuse to go to the Worker’s Stadium to see the Guoan [football] team, because I don’t have a real love for them and because I can’t cuss with a Beijing accent. But after being in Beijing for so long, you reach a kind of conciliation with old Beijing people. You’ll understand them in a more three-dimensional way, and can no longer simply label them.

 

“For Beijing’s new immigrants, the city is a distant place where they can’t stay; for Beijing’s old residents, the city is an old home they can’t return to.”

 

In fact, not all of the Peking people are unfriendly towards outsiders, a lot of my friends are Beijing rich kids. And it’s not like there are no young people in Beijing seeking progress – most of Beijing youth are just as diligent as we are.

You can dislike ‘Mr. Six’, and you can dislike the arrogant Beijing way of cussing and bragging, but you still have to respect them. Like you respect people from the northeast wearing gold necklaces or respect Shandong people for eating Chinese onions. It’s their culture, these are their customs. You don’t have to be like them, but the least you can do is to show respect from a distance.

I once took a taxi to Lin Cui Road. Because I was afraid the driver wouldn’t know the way, I opened the navigation on my phone to help him find the way. He said he did not need the navigation, because he knew that place. There was a flour mill there 30 years ago, [he said], it was demolished 10 years ago, and they built low-income housing there. I asked him how he knew this so well. “That used to be my home,” he said, the sorrow showing in his face.

I could hear nostalgia and resentment from the driver’s words. For Beijing’s new immigrants, the city is a distant place where they can’t stay; for Beijing’s old residents, the city is an old home they can’t return to.

We, as outsiders, ridicule Beijing on the one hand, while on the other hand, we cherish our hometowns. But in fact, we can still go back to our hometown. It is still there. It’s just that, with the defeats of each passing day, we can no longer adapt there. But for the old Beijingers, there really is no way to go back to their hometown. It has changed with unprecedented speed. We can still find our grandfather’s old house. The majority of Beijingers can only find their old homes through the coordinates on a map.

Some people say that we as outsiders have built Beijing, that if it weren’t for us, Beijingers wouldn’t even have breakfast to eat. The large numbers of people coming from outside the city have raised the housing prices in Beijing – they’ve created a flourishing city. But do you believe it? The native Beijingers might not need this kind of flourishing, and they also do not want higher housing prices. They are just like us, wanting a home that does not have too many people or too much traffic.

5

 

“There are over 20 million people left in this city, pretending to live.”

 

This year, they’ve begun to brick up the core city of Beijing. More and more small shops, small hotels and restaurants are forced to close, more and more people in the low-end market are forced to leave. This type of dressing-down and losing-weight city management frantically puts Beijing on the road to being a high-end and classy city. But it is becoming less and less of a convenient and livable city, and it is becoming further and further removed from being a city with a tolerant and open spirit.

Those who chase their dreams of success are now escaping. They’re off to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, or the West Coast of the United States. Those who’ve lost hope of chasing their dreams are also escaping. They returned to Hebei, the Northeast, and their hometowns.

There are over 20 million people left in this city, pretending to live. In reality, there simply is no life in this city. Here, all we have is the dreams of some people, and the jobs of most people.

–End—

Translated by Manya Koetse

©2017 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

Manya Koetse is the founder and editor-in-chief of whatsonweibo.com. She is a writer, public speaker, and researcher (Sinologist, MPhil) on social trends, digital developments, and new media in an ever-changing China, with a focus on Chinese society, pop culture, and gender issues. She shares her love for hotpot on hotpotambassador.com. Contact at manya@whatsonweibo.com, or follow on Twitter.

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4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Avatar

    Kevin Ma

    July 29, 2017 at 5:39 pm

    Thanks for your sharing!

  2. Avatar

    Hamza

    July 29, 2017 at 9:25 pm

    Hey, do you have a link for the Chinese version,

  3. Avatar

    Daniel

    August 1, 2017 at 3:43 pm

    When I lived in Beijing a while ago, it was my least favourite city in China. Chengdu was steamy & sexy with the best food anywhere, Shanghai was thrilling, buzzing and futuristic, Shenzhen was boring but pleasant. Beijing however – it is a harsh, cold and unforgiving city. There’s a sense of Big Brother watching over you. The only city where I was ripped off by thieving shysters and more than once at that.

  4. Avatar

    John Myers

    August 26, 2017 at 6:44 pm

    Zhang Guochen’s essay is badly needed in a country where these personal observations and feelings are censored. You might be able to validate many of his points throughout many large metropolises in China and throughout the world. This is the results of our modern world where progress and commerce over rule and push aside community and simple human interaction. People experiencing these situations should have the freedom to express their feelings in an honest way. This is a form of catharsis that can lead to dialog and healing. If censored, it will only manifest as unrest in the future.

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China Celebs

Hong Kong Police Find Head of Murdered Model Abby Choi in Soup Pot

“Reality is more gruesome than fiction,” some commenters wrote on Weibo, where the Abby Choi murder case has drawn wide attention.

Manya Koetse

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The gruesome murder of the 28-year-old Hong Kong socialite and model Cai Tianfeng (蔡天鳳), better known as Abby Choi, has been all the talk on Chinese social media this week.

The Hong Kong influencer went missing on Tuesday. Just a week ago, Choi was featured on the cover of the magazine L’Officiel Monaco.

On Saturday, South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Free Press reported that Choi’s partial remains, including her dismembered legs, were found cooked and stored inside the freezer at a village house and that four people had been arrested for murder.

The village house at Lung Mei Tsuen in Tai Po was allegedly set up as a “butchery site” equipped with a choppers, hammer, an electric saw and a meat grinder that had been used to mince human flesh.

Choi was entangled in a financial dispute with her ex-husband’s family over luxury property in Hong Kong’s Kadoori Hill. The persons arrested in relation to her murder are her ex-husband named Alex Kwong, his elder brother, his mother and his father, who reportedly is a retired police officer.

Abby Choi and Alex Kwong had two children together, a daughter and a son.

Cho was last seen in Fo Chun Road in Tai Po on Tuesday afternoon. CCTV footage captured her before she went missing. Choi was supposed to pick her daughter up on Tuesday together with Kwong’s elder brother, who drove her. She was reported missing after she did not show up to collect her daughter.

While earlier media articles reported that some of Choi’s remains had still not been found, news came out on Sunday that the decapitated head had been found in a soup pot. Seeing over 300 million views, the topic went trending on Weibo (#蔡天凤头颅在一大汤煲中找到#), where many people have closely been following the latest developments in the case. Later on Sunday night, the topic hashtag was taken offline.

Local police disclosed that the head remained “intact” although it is believed that someone tried to “smash” it. Some of Choi’s ribs were also found.

“Reality is more gruelsome than fiction,” some top comments said. “What a terrifying family,” others wrote, calling them “inhuman” and “devilish.”

Another topic related to the case also went trending on Sunday, namely that Choi’s ex-husband and his family allegedly had been planning the murder for a month (#蔡天凤前夫家1个月前开始布局#, 180 million views).

Some Weibo bloggers said the case reminded them of another well-known and gruesome Hong Kong murder case, namely the 2013 murder of Glory Chau and Moon Siu. At age 63, the couple was murdered by their own 28-year-old son Henry Chau Hoi-leung and his friend. After killing them, the two chopped up Chau’s and Siu’s bodies and cooked their remains and stored them inside the refrigerator. The 2022 crime film The Sparring Partner (正義迴廊) was based on this story.

About the Kwong family, some Weibo users write: “Too bad that Hong Kong law does not have the death penalty.” Capital punishment in Hong Kong was formally abolished in 1993.

By Manya Koetse 

 

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©2023 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

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China Arts & Entertainment

South Korean Actor Yoo Ah-in Dropped as Brand Ambassador in China after Propofol Scandal

The current drug scandal involving Yoo Ah-in also has consequences for the South Korean actor’s activities in China.

Manya Koetse

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The South Korean actor Yoo Ah-in (刘亚仁) has become a trending topic on Chinese social media for getting caught up in a drugs scandal in his home country.

Yoo Ah-in (1986) is an award-winning actor who is known for starring in various well-known dramas and renowned movies, such as Voice of Silence, Burning, and Hellbound.

Yoo is currently being investigated for alleged illegal, habitual use of the anesthetic drug propofol and has been banned from overseas travel.

On Thursday, the hashtag “Yoo Ah-in Admits to Using Drugs” (#刘亚仁确认吸毒#) received over 310 million views on Weibo, where several accounts reported that Yoo allegedly started using propofol in 2021.

Yoo issued a statement via his management, saying he is cooperating with the police in the investigation. He also apologized for causing concern among his fans and followers.

The drug scandal also has consequences for the actor’s activities in China. Liu was the brand ambassador for the Chinese men’s clothing brand Croquis (速写), but Croquis immediately removed him as their representative after the scandal.

Croquis issued a statement saying the company has been closely following the latest developments regarding the investigation into the actor’s alleged drugs use, and stated that they have “zero tolerance” when it comes to drug use and therefore would temporarily take all content offline in which Yoo represents their brand.

South Korean media reported on Feb. 9 that Yoo is among a group of 51 people that is part of an illegal drug use investigation initiated by the Food and Drug Administration, which found that Yoo went doctor hopping and “hospital shopping” to obtain multiple prescriptions.

Propofol is a sedative that is widely used by anesthetists for the induction and maintenance of general anesthesia and for long-term sedation. Over recent years, the abuse of propofol in South Korea has been getting more media attention.

Although propofol is classified as a controlled substance in South Korea since 2011, the recreational use of the drugs has been a problem and various celebrities have previously been charged for illegally using the drugs.

On Weibo, some people say that there indeed should be “zero tolerance” for drug abuse among celebrities and artists, but there are also those who think Yoo Ah-in’s drug abuse is a result of his alleged (mental) health problems, and that he needs help instead of punishment.

By Manya Koetse 

 

Get the story behind the hashtag. Subscribe to What’s on Weibo here to receive our newsletter and get access to our latest articles:

Spotted a mistake or want to add something? Please let us know in comments below or email us. First-time commenters, please be patient – we will have to manually approve your comment before it appears.

©2023 Whatsonweibo. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce our content without permission – you can contact us at info@whatsonweibo.com.

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