Photos and Text by Christopher Lay

As soon as I gave my destination in Chinese, the taxi driver pulled away from the curb and his question came, “Where are you from?” My pale skin and blonde hair made it evident that I’m not from Beijing. I answered in my broken Chinese that I’m from Shenzhen and he laughed. I like the idea of being from Shenzhen, a city without a history that accepts people wherever they come from as equal; Chinese people anyway. This is not always the case in Beijing. The driver pressed the question. Honestly, if I knew the phrase, I would have answered “Earth”, but I knew what he was driving at. He wanted to know my nationality. Perhaps it gave him a reference point for our limited discussion, or he keeps a tally of the various foreigners he has shuttled about the city, or he was just making small talk. In any event, I told him I’m an American, because I knew it was what he wanted to hear even though I don’t believe that is entirely the truth anymore.

For over a decade, I have lived outside the “we” and the “us” in five different countries. I am viewed as a “them”; an outlander to be stared at, pointed at and to have children prodded to practice their English with me. This is the life I have chosen and I am comfortable living inside the cultural ambiguity that comes with the territory. So I was taken aback recently when talking with Jiang, a friend and local Beijinger, about his experiences growing up in Beijing and his attitude towards outsiders. He seemed to have no problem with foreigners living in the Capital. His grudge lies with the millions of Chinese who have migrated to Beijing in the last two decades. To say he dislikes them is an understatement; in his words, he hates them.

Jiang’s family has lived in Beijing for generations and he grew up in the traditional Beijing manner, in a courtyard house in a hutong. These neighborhoods are typically made up of single story dwellings amid narrow alleyways. Hutongs are walled communities where the residents typically know everyone in the neighborhood and they share a strong sense of community and belonging that is more akin to village life than that of one of the world’s great metropolises. That lifestyle began to change dramatically with the explosion of growth in Beijing in the 1990s. Migrant workers from around China began to pour into the city looking for jobs and the coveted Beijing permanent residency permit or “hukou”.

This has happened in every major city in China, but Jiang feels the growth is different in Beijing. According to Jiang, many who have moved here are the wealthy from other provinces that have come in search of educational and economic benefits that comes from residing in the Capital. Students from Beijing get into universities with lower test scores than the national average. Combined with lower fuel, electricity and public transportation costs, they add up to a compelling reason to move to Beijing. The rush of growth has led to the destruction of old hutongs to make way for modern high-rise apartments and office buildings.

The demand for real estate has pushed up housing prices throughout the city and this is another source of contention for Jiang. “I’m in the top 5% of earners, but I had to put everything I’ve got into buying my home. How will my kid be able to afford to own a home in Beijing?” Jiang added, “I’m in the top 5%, but I’m at the bottom of it, and the difference is huge. Many of the people moving to Beijing are stinking rich.”

This growth in Beijing’s population over the past decade is the fastest since the 1950s when the population nearly doubled to 7.3 million. In the last 20 years, the greater metropolitan population has doubled in size to nearly 20 million. Consequently, more and more old neighborhoods are being razed and the younger generation, by choice or economic necessity, is moving out of the hutongs into more modern high-rise apartments.

Though some people clamor to save the hutongs and the lifestyle they embody, there is no denying that the face of Beijing is changing into a more cosmopolitan and nationally diverse one. Many who migrate to Beijing are laying down roots and have become a part of the fabric of Beijing, such as Guo Jian, an internationally acclaimed painter and a native of Guizhou province in the south west of China. When he moved to Beijing, there was nowhere to dine out for Guizhou cuisine, so he and two other friends from Guizhou started a restaurant, aptly named, Three Guizhou Men. Today, there are six restaurants in the chain throughout Beijing. Rather than just taking from the city, they have added Guizhou flavors to the Beijing culinary scene.

Despite his ire towards those who migrate to Beijing, Jiang takes an ironic degree of pride in the changes that migrants have brought to the city. “In Beijing, you can go to a restaurant from any province in China and it will taste like the food should taste. If I take a client from Chengdu to a Sichuan restaurant, he will tell me it tastes like home. That’s not true in cities like Shanghai and Hangzhou. In Beijing, we don’t try to change the taste.”

What it means to be a Beijinger will no doubt change in the coming years, and those like my friend Jiang will likely find themselves in the minority. Hopefully they will maintain what is good from their traditional ways to keep that element of the Beijing cultural alive. Perhaps they will also take a lesson from Shenzhen and learn to be more accepting of those who move to Beijing, establish roots and contribute to the ever-changing hot pot of cultural identity that is modern Beijing.

You can see more of Christopher Lay's work @ www.alivenotdead.com/chrislay.

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