Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future

Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future
by Tom Scocca
Riverhead Books

Beijing is a city made up of three parts: 'the moneyed artificial one, the wretched and broken one, the live and bustling one', muses Tom Scocca in Beijing Welcomes You, his debut book. To illustrate these jostling contradictions, Scocca - an American journalist who arrived in Beijing in 2004 and lived there on and off until 2010 - zooms in for a close-up inspection of the build-up to the Beijing Olympics. The result is an informative, if sometimes outdated, read.

The Olympics were China's boldest attempt to date to show its modern face to the world.

Scocca takes to his subject with gusto and most fascinating are his reports of the attempts of an enormous, chaotic city to turn out a cleansed version of itself for world consumption.

By 2008, he writes, there would be plans for an extra 2,000 police on duty, a new US$1 billion airport terminal and three new subway lines; rats, mosquitoes, black beetles and lice would be eradicated around the Olympic sites; 35 per cent of Beijingers would speak English; all rivers within the city would be pollution-free; and Beijing residents would 'quit their ingrained habit of spitting in the streets'.

Scocca is an endearing guide to this flux and change, and reports with wide eyes the demolishment and reconstruction of an entire city. The story starts in 2004 when Scocca follows his Chinese-American wife, Christina, to Beijing. Together they build a life, have a baby and endure the myriad frustrations and fascinations of China.