Some changes in big city China since 2019. Most evident: the sloganeering meltdown. The let’s not spit or smoke posters are long gone (since people don’t anymore [more or less]) but the next gen bilingual PSAs being beta tested on the Metro (epicenter of social engineering) are lame. They lack logic (only asking us to wear masks on long journeys), focus (OK Xinjiang is nice, but what’s the action item?) or both (merely getting on board is an achievement in itself during most waking hours so who would even consider bringing [or using] their own stools [or chairs]?)

Pinched from a museum but possibly the mission statement of the PSA Department. Needs work.

Most unexpected and also most terrifying: Since most cars and all buses, mopeds, and bikes are now electric no one needs to shout or crank up the volume on Tik Tok videos. The quiet is blissful but the volume of traffic has not decreased, requiring constant vigilance, especially round corners. Most welcome millions of the Beijing bourgeoisie and the thousands of restaurants that feed them have come to realize it is possible to enjoy Kale Caesar Salad and complicated cocktails without rounding up 10 friends first, vastly expanding my possibilities for solo dining beyond dubious street food. I am hoping this message has also penetrated the hinterland where both bourgeoisie and kale will be less evident. Also unexpected: Despite logging almost 100,000 steps round some of the most iconic sites I have yet to see another Western Tourist or even expat come to that. The hordes of junior-year-abroaders from anywhere in the West have simply evaporated.

I am even able to order Peking Duck for one. The waitresses circle, itching to save me from myself, but I tell them firmly that this is how we do it in England (to say the USA seems like a bridge too far).

The Forbidden City actually is

I suppose I’m lucky that out of a city of 22 million only 20,000 or so have also decided there is nowhere better on a sunny and warm(ish) Saturday than the Forbidden City. Fortunately, when we all emerge together from the Tiananmen Square Metro at least the same number of security personnel are already on site, ready to photograph us one by one (in the pleasant weather equanimity rules on both sides). Still the only Westerner, I am hauled out of the scrum, my passport regarded with horror, and frantically waved through.

The medium is the message and the scrum gives us the time we need to decode it

Hold the smugness though, I don’t have a tangible ticket and finding an official who won’t recoil from my passport, acknowledge a Forbidden City even exists or point me to where it should be scanned for admission is impossible. Some 20,000 steps later, I find a NYL with time on her hands who kindly explains that this vast complex hiding in plain sight is actually called ‘The Palace’ in Chinese, while the entrance gate (completely obscured by the scrum) has several names, none of which appear in the Lonely Planet (LP) or online. I muscle my way to the front of the line and I’m in.

It doesn’t take but a minute to realize the combination of my meager imagination and a mere iphone is never going to be able to capture the scale of this behemoth. (Later I even climb up what passes for a hill for what LP assures me is a better perspective. It isn’t).

A few snaps later and it clearly isn’t happening. Meanwhile 20,000 of us fade into insignificance

Even close ups don’t work

A rare exception from the clock collection

It is so nice and warm within the high walls that one by one we decide that supplementing our knowledge of Chinese history can wait for another day, and with the exception of the men who are still taking their ineffectual photos and reading off every single caption, we all settle down to what we do best. Moms wrangle the grandfolks, kids and cousins into corners and ply them with snacks (snacks are taken very seriously in Beijing).

Spun sugar snacks with more artistic vision than many objets I will pay more good money to see

Gen Zers on dates who might as well be anywhere cozy up to their endless TikTok videos and everyone with the exception of lone boomers leans hard into glorious cosplay; the ancient costume of your dreams being conveniently available from many enterprises just outside the walls. A sunny afternoon in March and where better to replay our aristocratic fantasies than the epicenter of all the Chinese Empires.

Saturday afternoon aristocrats

Clearly this wasn’t her idea

Even the dads want in on the action

Quarterly meeting of the Saturday Afternoon Aristocrats Society

Yes cosplay and Tik Tok can work together

Not shown, disconsolate other brother, not being similarly feted

Later in a fit of hubris I buy a concert ticket, but the combination of 30,000 steps and persistent jet lag takes its toll and I sleep soundly through both a tense Schonberg and the intermission, awaking only in some confusion to what sounds like Mahler’s 4th although there are only 16 instruments on stage. Lost in Translation redux.

Am I hallucinating? In addition to the piano the orchestra for Mahler’s 4th seems to include a harpsichord. I am woken by the appearance of a loud soprano in the last movement. The young man obscuring the scene is holding a placard that tells us when not to clap.