The face of innocence
The fondest wish of Beijing's planners is that their city should embody the ancient and the modern in equal measure. And their dream has already half come true: Beijing has not quite achieved modernity, but its traditional aspects are still firmly in place.
Not only are there ancient temples and Qing dynasty courtyards aplenty; there is a traditional element present in the people, as well. In fact, the most traditional thing about Beijing may be standing at your elbow, waiting to serve you a plate of gongbao jiding (spicy chicken with peanuts).
There is a type of Beijing waitress recognisable as a recent arrival from the countryside. She (and they are almost all women) is dressed unfashionably, perhaps with hands chapped red, and often stout from a youth spent in the fields. As she works, she wears an expression of deep shock and bewilderment, as though the goings-on of the restaurant were a highly co-ordinated, nonsensical ritual.
Impatient diners curse her ineptitude, the kinder ones smile, her co-workers chide or console her - she receives it all with the same numb gaze, as if to say, 'this all may make sense to you, but it is quite meaningless to me'. She has come from a slow life, where all that was required of her was industry in work, solicitude for her family and preservation of her modesty. She is young, perhaps 16 or 17, but she represents a way of life that has its roots in the age of dynasties.
Granted, the country edge comes off quickly. It does not take long to learn the proper way to dress, the proper way to smile and to find a place in the city's modern social machinery. Three months later, she is gone - to a better restaurant or another line of work. But she is replaced immediately by someone just as fresh from the countryside, and this is the conundrum for those responsible for 'improving' Beijing's image. In the heart of China's cosmopolitan aspirations, there is a constant, unstoppable welling-up of its most pre-modern element.
No doubt the authorities will have the situation firmly in hand by the 2008 Olympic Games, and Beijing's peasant migrants will be hidden safely from sight. But one cannot help hoping that some visiting Olympic athlete, a Greek wrestler or Nigerian long-distance runner, will go wandering. That he will duck into a dumpling joint and take a seat, and that the waitress, catching sight of him, will be stunned into immobility.
The two will stare at one another, open-mouthed, each confronting the unfamiliar. And why not let them stare? Beijing has brought the modern and the traditional together: it would be a shame not to let them meet.
