The next time you're hit with a burning need for the hard facts on Beijing's economic development or population growth, do as follows. Go to the website of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics, scroll to the bottom left corner, and call the number labelled 'statistical information inquiries'.
If you're lucky, the phone will be answered by a man who sounds to be in his mid-50s. He seems a touch bewildered, but nonetheless pleased to take your call. Ask him anything, and he will shuffle off in search of the proper books, muttering to himself. If he finds what you're looking for, he sounds satisfied; if not, he will apologise readily. It is a gratifying experience either way, and one can almost picture him at his broad wooden desk, jar of tea leaves and a newspaper to hand, bookcase behind him - the very model of a Beijing bureaucrat.
Except that he's the exception, not anyone's model. Anyone who has ever tried to dig up hard facts in Beijing runs into a prevailing sentiment that seems to be: 'I spent weeks finding all this information, now it is mine to guard.' In the halls of authority, information - in any shape or form - is generally regarded as problematic, to be concealed unless absolutely necessary.
Luckily for the future of the nation, this particular mindset is on its way out - at least, in stock markets and other modern economic institutions. There, 'transparency' has become a byword. The Beijing Arbitration Commission has installed a computer podium in its lobby that displays, for any passer-by to see, the commission's internal financial workings. The free flow of information is piggy-backing on China's economic development, a value instilled in every new MBA student China produces.
But the man on the other end of the phone is cut from the old cloth, a reminder of an earlier time - perhaps an entirely mythical time - when cadres were just regular people working to solve everyday problems. When the byword was 'let's keep this simple, we're all friends here', it was true.
Listening to him patiently shuffling papers, one wishes that he was the one handing out visas at the Foreign Affairs Office, or administering the byzantine hukou registration system.