The parallel you draw between Beijing's xiaomaibu and rural Kentucky country stores captures something universal about these neighborhood anchors. What strikes me about the Baitasi area is how it preserves that social connectivity despite rapid urban development—the White Pagoda standing as both historical landmark and gathering point for everyday commerce. Your documentation of these spaces feels increasingly important as modernization sweeps through Chinese cities.
Beyond seeing KFC and Jim Beam/Evan Williams everywhere, it felt like these little spaces brought me immense joy simply because so much of it reminded me of the spaces in my rural KY hometown. As to what you said about modernization, that's the rub, right? Beijing felt like a city that was actively engaged in that negotiation between preserving it's most authentic self or the thing that ties itself to the past (something they're keen on paying lip service to) while moving at hyper speed to modernize and sort of turn the page on what they once were. Twenty to thirty year old buildings are being torn down for new ones. The hutongs, as you so aptly put it, are quite literally fighting that battle everyday. You look at Nanluoguxiang and Houhai v Dashilar or Batasi and the differences are stark. But, I think there's a solid movement to slow or make that pace of change a little more sustainable. I would have loved to take a deeper dive into all of it, but 1) it just wasn't a priority and 2) given why I was there, it probably would have been one of those things that would have been frowned upon.
The parallel you draw between Beijing's xiaomaibu and rural Kentucky country stores captures something universal about these neighborhood anchors. What strikes me about the Baitasi area is how it preserves that social connectivity despite rapid urban development—the White Pagoda standing as both historical landmark and gathering point for everyday commerce. Your documentation of these spaces feels increasingly important as modernization sweeps through Chinese cities.
Beyond seeing KFC and Jim Beam/Evan Williams everywhere, it felt like these little spaces brought me immense joy simply because so much of it reminded me of the spaces in my rural KY hometown. As to what you said about modernization, that's the rub, right? Beijing felt like a city that was actively engaged in that negotiation between preserving it's most authentic self or the thing that ties itself to the past (something they're keen on paying lip service to) while moving at hyper speed to modernize and sort of turn the page on what they once were. Twenty to thirty year old buildings are being torn down for new ones. The hutongs, as you so aptly put it, are quite literally fighting that battle everyday. You look at Nanluoguxiang and Houhai v Dashilar or Batasi and the differences are stark. But, I think there's a solid movement to slow or make that pace of change a little more sustainable. I would have loved to take a deeper dive into all of it, but 1) it just wasn't a priority and 2) given why I was there, it probably would have been one of those things that would have been frowned upon.