Why I’m (Not) Leaving Beijing

“I’m leaving Beijing.”

How many times have I heard those words? Perhaps dropped casually over a couple of pints at Great Leap #12, or maybe I read them in a WeChat post. It’s one of the rewards for holding out here. Stay five years and you level up with a terminal case of black lung, a liver which only responds to pure formaldehyde, and the right to pen a valedictory essay on your way out the door. Stay here long enough and they might even do a podcast about you.

Sure, there have been moments over the past decade when I’ve also thought of shipping out. There have been other incidents at the visa office when I faced the possibility that my end date would not be of my own choosing. Could I adjust to life in the People’s Republic of Trump? What would it be like to spend my declining years in the hills of New Hampshire writing increasingly out-of-touch missives about my old life in China while my wife complains that the local restaurant puts corn in their gongbao jiding?

Well, f**k that. I’m staying.

I want my air crunchy and my gongbao jiding to be a pure, unadulterated mess of chicken parts, peanuts, chili peppers, and enough MSG to give a rhino testicular cancer. I want my crosswalks to be free-fire zones. I like the seasons of Beijing. Chinese New Year. Big smog. Little smog. Heat. Miserable heat. Get me the hell out of here heat and humidity. Fall (for an hour or two each year). And then winter.

I like that Beijing chooses its residents like a garlic-fouled cab driver cruising a dark Sanlitun alley in the wee hours of Saturday. It is grit and growl, baijiu and attitude. Beijing is steampunk in a Mando-pop world.

Admittedly, 2017 was a tough year in the city. A lot of people went home. Not all of them voluntarily. Major political events, random drug testing, business closures, housing demolitions, and the bowdlerization of the hutongs were hardly a love letter to the city’s residents. But I’m over that. It’s a new year – er-ling-yi-ba, b*tches!

I’m giving 2018 a chance because it’s the only year I’ve got at the moment. I’m giving Beijing a chance because it’s home. It’s the gristle in my baozi and the place where I’ve left my heart and, according to my last check-up, about 38 percent of my lung capacity. It is imperial halls and Gongti clubs. It’s the quiet Xicheng neighborhoods, the ones just off of Houhai and Xihai where the only sounds on a winter’s evening are the clacking of mahjong tiles and chess pieces and the quiet guttural words friends share over a cheap cigarette and a bottle of sorghum hooch.

It’s a tough place to raise a kid or the perfect place to raise a tough kid. I’m not sure which but maybe one day I’ll find out. Most of my friends with children decamped already, leaving behind strange excuses like “school systems” and “food safety.” Whatever. I like to take my chances. Every bite of chuan’r is a culinary game called “feline roulette.” Gutter oil? Forget about it. I’ve spent time in an oily Beijing gutter (The Den, one year gone, RIP).

I suppose it’s also the history. Despite the best efforts of well-meaning urban planners fresh from academic sojourns in places like London, Toronto, Tokyo, and the Central Party Academy, Beijing still has a little bit of history lurking beneath the Disneyfied recreations of formerly historic sites. Looking for them is another reason I stay. Sharing those places with others is how I make a living.

Yeah, Beijing is a tough mistress, a city that a friend once compared to living in an abusive relationship. He’s now in Bangkok. I’m still here … for as long as they’ll let me stay.

Beijing wansui.

This article first appeared in the January/February 2018 issue of the Beijinger, which you can read via PDF online or in hard copy at all of your favorite venues across town.

Image: Lonely Planet

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