Disseminating Tracks: (Beijing Prelude)

From East to West, the twain kept a-rolling, spreading into Europe and the Middle East.  Devouring book after book as I travel, each page revealing new insights into how great an extent Asia defined Europe, despite the latter's reluctance to admit it.  These influences came on the hoof of the Mongols of course.  Being a product of a Eurocentic education and culture, I'd grown up believing that they'd been bringers of war, conquerors of cities, slaughterers of culture.  Yet due to my current reading, I now see their progenitor Genghis (hereafter Chinggis, in keeping with the true pronunciation) as one of the world's earliest proponents of globalization. Slaughter he did, yes, but only those who opposed him (no different than the economic policies of a certain sitting president).  Those who bent the knee were absorbed into the growing diaspora, their knowledge and experts utilized, their technologies and economies emulated. And almost as amazing as all that the Mongols accomplished, was the brief period in which they did it.  Their dominance lasted a mere 150 years or so, but their legacy lived on.

Until the 20th Century at least. The prior century was the most horrific proponent of genocide in history, culturally speaking.  Back in 2006, I'd flown to Beijing in order to bicycle around the old Mongol hutong neighborhoods, worried that they wouldn't survive the frenzy leading to the 2008 Olympic Games.  Prophetically, on my roamings today I find them long gone, replaced by new monuments to Chinese wealth, monuments found in every large city across the globe, monuments to the icons of fashions that will fade from the stage far more quickly than the Mongols had.  For isn't the nature of empires, business or otherwise, to fall?

 With a keen sense of irony, we stay at another monument to empire, the Beijing Hotel, which started life in 1917 as the Grand Hotel du Pekin, before eventually becoming the head of Japanese operations during their occupation. I have a Lost in Translation moment as I wander through its sprawl, trying desperately to find the Writer's Bar.  Somewhere during my journey I come to a massive banquet room, whose grand columns and staircase looks like a set from The Last Emperor, after Pu Yi was made puppet of the Japanese.  I finally find the bar, its French-made parquet floor the first dance floor in China, its walls hung with the celebrities and dignitaries entertained by Mao and the Gang over the subsequent half century.  I hope they had better luck with the menu, as nearly everything I ask for has run out.  I suppose I need to get back into China mode.  Luckily I'll only be here for one day. 

 

On the turntable: Bruce Hornsby, "Here Come the Noise Makers"