Beijing is so rad

We've been in Beijing since July 21st. It is a radical city with an astonishing identity crisis. The 6 nights we were booked for morphed into 14 and we still won't be ready to leave when our time here is up. I didn't have lofty expectations for this place and they have been hugely exceeded.

The neighborhood we stayed in for the first part of our trip was Xicheng, near Ping Anli. We were at the Red Lantern House, which I highly recommend if you are looking for quaint, friendly, hip Beijing. The West building, where we stayed, is nestled off the main drag
(though not in a hutong) behind large painted wooden gates. Some rooms face an interior courtyard with a glass ceiling, a bridge over a little koi river, and cosy couches. Ours faced an exterior courtyard covered in potted plants and crawling vines. Incidentally, 600 ml beers are 500 yuan/70 cents.

Our first full day we wandered from our hotel through countless, ancient hutongs and wound up in Tiananmen Square. I think this first walk sums up my impression of Beijing; it is so rich in history (the really old kind, not like our few hundred years in the US), but the
evidence is being paved over in the interest of progress. The obsession with modernity can be seen in nearly every aspect of Beijing life, from the cult status of name brands to the leveling of historical courtyards to widen the boulevards. When you glimpse the
ruins of the dynasties, it breaks your heart a little to think of whats been lost to ugly block soviet-style architecture. To consider the wooden temples and marble statues that met with the wrecking ball to make Tiananmen Square the size of several football fields. But
that's Beijing. Each dynasty leveled much of what was built by the prior. All that's left of the imperial palace of the Mongols is one lousy jade vase. The Communist party took down the dynastic and ornate walls around the city. Hundreds of blocks of hutongs were
destroyed in preparation for the Olympics. This is just how these guys roll....

The result is that Beijing is like an onion. Every block and every sight is built atop another site that it has usurped. Proletariat slogans from the 70s can be glimpsed in one of the oldest hutongs in the city; which has now become a hipster haven for artists and expats.
You could spend ages peeling back the layers, looking for the real Beijing, but I think its a place that exists as the sum of its history. You have to just eat the onion.