Lost

It's been 8 or 9 years since i've last been in Beijing. It is so different now. I don't understand it.

i was looking for a touristy market and ended up in some rich district of beijing where all the rich people live. It was empty. Lifeless. disturbingly sanitary. It was interesting how easy it was to find a starbucks (which has free wireless in China).

I once said that China was in a unique window of time in between the openness of its society and the settling of society into the selfish makings of capitalist society. I think that window of oppurtunity is closed. It's really hard to articulate, but the feeling is there.

The consumerism... okay, so I know- consumerism isn't all bad. I've struggled with this a lot. But honestly, even though I am the product and imposer of a consumer system (for example, I am sitting at a starbucks right now, enjoying free internet on my apple computer), I hate how it can change people or a place.

This isn't the Beijing I knew. But I guess I can't stop change and the insatiable desire of all Asian societies to be more like the west. Affluence is the goal, and it is somehow the betterment of society to achieve affluence.

But i can't help but think about all the people made invisible in China. Where are all the beggars? The handicapped that I once saw squatting in the subways all the time? Even the common workers seem to be invisible and unseen. I don't think Beijing has solved its poverty problem. I think it has just hidden it. Hiding it for some utopian dream of what the Olympics will do to make them matter in the world.

I feel disconcerted. The China I knew is gone. The most disturbing of disturbing feelings that I have right now is this: I don't feel like I have left America.