BEIJING - I don't actually live in China.
I live in Wudaokou, a small area on the northwest side of Beijing. Although there are no embassies here, I'm pretty sure that crimes committed here aren't prosecuted in a normal Chinese court. If Wudaokou declared independence and became a Monaco-esque city-state, I wouldn't be surprised. Life here, at least in and around the Tsinghua campus, is different.
As I chugged closer to the Chinese border on the Trans-Siberian Express, I remembered the things that annoyed me during previous visits: the spitting, the crowds, car exhaust, yelling and eating of strange body organs. Near the frontier these concerns reached a fever pitch, and I wondered why I'd decided to trek halfway across the world to come here. Then I entered China, and immediately fell through a manhole cover, verifying my suspicions.
Turns out I was wrong. None of my Chinese "pet peeves" are noticeable here in the university district. In a month, I haven't seen anyone spit, there are few cars on campus, and the caps to on-campus manholes seem to be thoroughly in place.
While life here can hardly be considered calm, there's not the awe-inspiring hordes that can be found at many Chinese institutions such as a railway station, open-air market or McDonald's. People frequently queue, and in most of the campus loudspeakers don't blast continuous streams of pop music on nature-lovers.
In gaining phlegm-free streets, I've lost little. There are still the things I love about China, many of which I've already detailed on this blog: the people, the bikes, the food and the service.
Now if I wanted to seek out these Chinese characteristics (In Chinese: 特点. I can now count this blog entry as studying for tomorrow's listening exam.) I dislike, I merely need to bike ride 15 minutes south, west or east of the campus (it's hard to go north), to return to the China I once knew. But in my day-to-day life I see surprisingly little of it.
Perhaps life here at Tsinghua is a preview of what things will be like in 25, 30 years. If that's the case, I suspect I'll be very comfortable in the China of 2037.
