Shijingshan
Shijingshan is a western district of Beijing, and as such, it is steeped in history (link to history). Shijingshan’s recent history has been dominated by Shougan Iron and Steel. To the west of Shijingshan, where Pingguoyuar (apple orchard) meets the mountains, sits the largest iron and steel mill in the world, which employed 200,000 of the 500,000 citizens of Shijingshan. The site of this mill is surreal, and one that you can never really get used to.
In its bid for the 2008 Olympics, Beijing agreed to move the operations base of Shougan Iron and Steel, and they have done so. They have rezoned the site of the iron and steel mill as a silicon valley, a technology park for the development of digital entertainment systems. The district itself has been redisignated as the City Recreation District. (Beijing is zoned in this way: Haidian to the north is the education district, and Chaoyang is the City Business District.)
Foreigners in Beijing tend to live in Haidian, as students, or in the CBD, as embassy staff, business people, or teachers. It is very difficult for foreign people to understand the sense in which Shijingshan is the City Recreation District, or why it was considered the best district in which to live in a poll conducted among Beijing residents. Shijingshan has no coffee shops, no bars, no foreign food restaurants, and only one disco which is utterly alien, and utterly incomprehensible. There are instead KTV’s, restaurants, parks, and foot massage places in abundance. Chinese and foreign people have very different ideas of recreation. Shijingshan is the recreation district because it has an amusement park, an international sculpture park, and places of natural and historical beauty, such as Fragrant Hills, Badachu (Eight Great Places), Fahai Si, and the mountains to the west.
The area is developing quickly, and in December 2008 a new retail and entertainment center, Wanda plaza west, is scheduled to open. It will have cinemas, coffee shops, western style supermarkets and a pub. This is not, however, likely to alter the traditionally Chinese tone of Shijingshan.
Shijingshan is a sought after place for Chinese people to live because while it is convenient to the city, the pace of life is slow, traditional and relaxed. People are smiling and friendly; it is a genuinely harmonious society. Chinese people do not choose Haidian or the CBD as the most sought after district in which to live because they feel these districts are messy: believe it or not, many people do not want to hear drunken students or other party goers yahooing down the street in the early hours of the morning. The CBD is a knot of congested traffic day in and day out. It takes 20 minutes and nimble feet to get across the road. In Shijingshan, local transport proceeds at a serene pace.
Despite protestations otherwise, it may be stated that Chaoyang is not the real China: it is an inverse of China town, or worse, it is the international no man’s land of the airport terminal.
Why did you come if not to see what it is like to live in another world? Let go of the bars, discos and 5 Star buffets; let yourself drift out into the waters of another world.