Evolution of the East
While the Forbidden City remains, Christopher Knowles discovers a modern metropolis has sprung up since he last visited Beijing 35 years ago
In September 2016 I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, a condition for which there is at the moment no cure. Only in China and in a few other countries that in some respects are on the fringes of the medical establishment is there any treatment on offer at all. Notwithstanding the admitted remedial limitations it seemed to me worth spending some money and taking a small risk, so in October 2016 I went back to Beijing for medical treatment.
It is unimaginably different to the strangely etiolated city I saw when I first went there in 1981. Then, to most people in the English speaking world, it was still known as Peking, only gradually universally replaced by its local name in homage to China’s apparent desire to form a relationship with the western world. In 1981 and throughout most of that decade, and notwithstanding some obvious material changes in the standard of living, doubts over China’s future were widespread given that even with the demise of Chairman Mao the country remained a single party state, a circumstance considered incompatible with organic change leading to the possibilities of genuine democracy.
By 1981, with some glorious exceptions, like the Forbidden City, much of old Peking had been swept away. The old walls and vast areas of traditional architecture had been forced to make way for idealistically driven notions of wide boulevards flanked by interminable rows of gimcrack offices and apartment blocks. With the exception of creaking trolleybuses, old-fashioned army lorries and battalions of pedal bicycles, the roadways were largely empty. There was only a handful of hotels to serve the incipient tourist industry. Shopping was confined to the so-called friendship stores. Although there were early signs of entrepreneurial activity, everything was ultimately in the hands of the state. The idea that a westerner would travel to China then for medical treatment was laughable. And yet only 35 years later I found myself returning for that very thing because nothing comparable was available in the west.
I landed at Beijing’s Capital airport at dawn on a Sunday morning. The airport alone is an indication of how much China has changed: it is a city in its own right. The railway transit between terminal and customs area is not the paltry swift shuttle such as we are used to in Europe but a fullblooded commute that seemed to go on for ever. Even at that early hour the airport was filled with passengers all of whom were queuing in some disarray, as the one thing that did not appear to have changed was the hint of chaos that always attends Chinese crowds.
As finally we drove out of the airport just how much the city has changed became immediately clear. Or should I say not clear as the air had a certain grey opaqueness, which I suppose was due to the city’s infamous pollution. It hung over a skyline that in its dystopian way was quite remarkable for as far as the eye could see suburbs extended.
Where once there were the fields I would have driven by countless times watching peasants at work at their crops, now there were buildings of all sizes and heights. There was a kind of magnificence in the sight, a grandeur peculiar to great cities. In this case the grandeur was expressed through knowledge, the knowledge that Beijing was not only the capital of the People’s Republic of China but had been until 1911 the capital of perhaps the greatest civilisation in history.
The distance through the suburbs to the centre of the city was some 20km. At first it seemed that everything was uniform in a contemporary sort of way until behind the façades alongside the road it was possible to discern parks and, the invariable touchstone of a modern economy, international shopping malls. All told I was looking at a brand-new megapolis.
But wait! Much of what I was seeing has not changed at all. Even if the traffic of modern Beijing was many times busier than what I had once known, among it all some of the details of Chinese life remained unaltered. There is the worker straining as he pedals laboriously through limousines and four-wheeldrives on his tricycle. There are the groups of men and women practising Tai Chi or even ballroom dancing on the pavement; there the men hunched over their chessboards in the parks. All that is missing are the children with holes on the rear of the trousers, their wooden prams pushed by grandparents with bound feet that I occasionally saw on my early visits to China.
The hospital was not a technological marvel but it was clean and functional. I had my own room with ensuite bathroom and there was a fridge and microwave as well as a regular supply of purified water. Nurses and doctors were in constant attendance and I felt that I was in good hands. No claims were made for a miracle cure, only the assurance of possible help in delaying the rate of degeneration through the administration of stem cells. I trusted the Chinese in medical matters even if my own experience of Chinese hospitals was limited to a painful experience at the hands of a dentist in Shanghai in 1982 and of escorting tourists with colds and stomach bugs to primitive provincial hospitals that were the legacy of Chairman Mao’s attempts to modernise China.
My trust was not betrayed. I could not have asked for better care than that provided to me and to the handful of other foreigners who were there for similar reasons. Some months on and I do not know whether the treatment has been of any use; but at least in China efforts are being made to give some hope. It is a measure of how far China has come that one would even consider it as a first choice for medical treatment.
After a few days in hospital I went in the company of friends to the centre of the city, where I was reminded of what China had been and has become and why it continues to fascinate. The giant portrait of Chairman Mao presides over Tiananmen Square. The glorious vermillion walls of the Forbidden City glow in the late afternoon light. Chinese lanterns hang among the trees. Wangfujing was our destination, for a long time the main shopping area of the city; but where in the past the shops held little interest for prosperous foreigners, now it was possible to buy almost anything, from the meanest toy to the most expensive luxury car. As for food, the range and choice was the equal of anywhere in the world. Entire floors of department stores were dedicated to nothing but restaurants, all crowded with enthusiastic local diners. This is the fascination of new China: in a few short steps you can move from the incomparable glories of the Forbidden City to everything that is modern in the contemporary world. The Red Line: A Railway Journey Through the Cold War by Christopher Knowles (published by Pen and Sword Books, in hardback (£25) and ebook) is available from online retailers and to order from all
good bookstores.