Quest for Innocence

Qianmen area, the former core of the amazing city we call Beijing, is becoming a ghost town. In a late Sunday morning, sunny, quiet, walking around the hutong for an hour, I didn’t see any local girls or boys of my age — in their mid twenties. I saw 3 little kids playing and chasing each other; I encountered an old hunching lady picking a big garbage bag, she looked at me as if she’s never seen a young girl for a long time; I bumped into several groups of migrant workers — I am not experienced enough to tell where they are from from their accent, but they are young, and they were in groups, walking together in the deserted area, I didn’t dare to look into their eyes, I was afraid they could read my fear of being only by myself, not protected by any male, in a bright Sunday late morning. This city has almost 20 million people, and in the former heart of the city, I felt all alone, not crowded, abandoned. That heart of the city is abandoned.

Somehow I was drifted to the famous Liqun Duck Place — touristy crap.
Who wrote their review? Must be people without consciousness, people like me.
Who like to write, and like to make a living by writing, enjoy writing beautifully, even knowing they are writing beautiful lies.

200 RMB (30 USD) for a duck, in a grungy hutong place, with Chinese tea served in TEA BAGS? Insulting.
Iron Buddha, my favorite tea, served in tea bags, smelled nothing like Iron Buddha.

The duck actually tasted not bad.

I am from this gray city, duck is my home food. The waitress asked me, do you know how to eat Peking Duck?
Put the round skin in your hand, dip the duck in the sauce, put the cucumber and onion, wrap it up.
How nice.

Fast food duck. Pre-cooked.
You are not eating the duck, you are eating the Beijing flavor, you are supporting the dying hutong, witnessing its hard breathing, stinky yet commercial. It’s a pretty sad taste.

We are losing our land, losing our characters, our accent, our lifestyle, our pace.
Yet, it is the newcomers that raise the value of our land, that try to imitate our accent, “better” and “faster” our lifestyle, yet our character, untamed. Untamed.