China Part 2: Beijing
One of the first things I noticed about Taipei, a theme which continued in Beijing, was the total difference in urban infrastructure to anything I had ever seen before. A massive elevated freeway at 3 different levels sliced through both the jungle hills and urban cores of the city. Although there were some slow downs, our bus ride from the airport was smooth and largely absent of traffic. In the city, the streets were as wide as LA highways yet contained a remarkable amount of greenery, often with trees along every median. It’s almost as if they had taken America’s love for cars and massive expanses of roadway and built a city perfectly for it. The downtown area we were staying in didn’t feel cramped or crowded. There were massive sidewalks followed by big bike lanes mostly used for mopeds and protected bus only lanes with built in bus platforms. This differs greatly from the cramped one way streets of American cities where bikes, pedestrians, and buses are often thrown by the wayside.
The Taipei and Beijing metros were also a remarkable feat. Their systems were huge, comprehensive, clean, efficient, fast, and cheap. It rivaled the best transit systems in Europe, far surpassing those in the US.
It begs the question, why is their infrastructure so good and ours so bad?
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The answer is actually pretty simple and intuitive: rules. Or lack thereof. Chinese labor is cheap, beyond anything we would consider a living wage in the western world and the laws not only allow that, but encourage it. Additionally, the government has far more control even in a democracy like Taiwan (total control in China) meaning the difficult land acquisition and eminent domain fights aren’t a big issue. Finally, the impact studies and pre-construction research don’t have the power or cost that ones in the US do. The thought process for Asian urban planners is as simple as “Traffic is bad, so we should build more roads to relieve congestion” and then they build more roads.
People in China love to shop. You would never know that more people buy online than anywhere else in the world because of the sheer number of malls and shopping streets. In the US we talk about the death of the mall and how brick and mortar stores are going out of business. However, according to JD.com (the Amazon of China) only 10% of retail sales in the US are online versus 20% in China. So why then are stores booming in real life when they are taking a smaller piece of the retail pie?
The Pie is BIG. Really Big. China has a 1.3 billion person population and the fastest growing economy in the world. Their population is rapidly urbanizing and growing wealthier than ever. China has a middle class and they really like clothes. Nike and Adidas stores are everywhere. Every neighborhood in basically every city we went to has their own store, many have multiple (one for kids, one for running, one for everything else). In addition to the growing wealth of the people of China, the society is heavily influenced by the west. The most high fashion people at UW are almost always Chinese international students. Brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior have set up huge flagship stores in all the biggest cities. The three nicest malls I’ve ever been to were in Taipei 101, SOHO Beijing, and the China World Mall. The notorious culture of “fakes” seems to be fading. According to a post on the Beijing subreddit, expats in the city tell tourists that no one buys fakes in person anymore, that’s all moved on. The famous Silk Street shopping mall home to anything counterfeit you can imagine is directed at tourists from abroad, not locals or even Chinese tourists. You’ll see more real Gucci being worn on the street in Beijing than you would in New York, Paris, or Milan.
