2008
Hidden Beijing
Le monde du spectacle.For visitors, coming to an Olympic city where so many aspects of life — clothing, conversation, food, everything — are staged is only going to cause more confusion about China when the returning waiguoren tell their stories about Beijing. Expats burn when travel writers and foreign journalists make simplistic generalization, but, with half the Beijing story hidden, I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of it. And this will only reinforce the commonly-held belief that Westerners just can’t understand China. (Or the commonly-held belief that China’s all ancient temples and KFCs. Either or!)


