One Nite Inn Sanni's

I could almost tell the time has come after heard James Blunt’s new hit ‘goodbye my lover’… or perhaps the instable side of me had started crouching as I began to feel more comfortable living here...

Like my friends June and Steve would say, life is like sometimes you are f**king, and most of times you get f**ked… and I can’t even recall how many times were there when I thought I was running ahead of the game but eventually the reality will show me just how unlucky I was as I might running into a dead end…

I was dating this marvelous girl from Vancouver, as my hommie Judy describes: ‘a once in a life time opportunity’, ‘the hottest girl will ever go out with me’; lived in one of the city’s sparkling high rise apartment; had a decent salary more importantly surrounded by some of greatest friends; meanwhile we cooked for each other and walked our dog everyday before and after work (some post-marriage lifestyle I used  to describe on my cousin and her boyfriend back in Toronto); she would struggling every morning to attend class and study Chinese; explains to me how much prettier she looks before met me; and give up all her plans when I was sick in bed…all my friends firmly believed we were going steady and about to settle here for good… and It wasn’t until the night in June, like I always knew, challenges and new opportunities would always come quietly and knock my door whenever I felt a sense of belonging… maybe from taking this offer I could really get a break through with my professional development, maybe to have a fresh start will somehow ease the emotional challenges with my love which something I haven’t learned enough from my previous love and relationship…

5 days to Dubai, I never thought leaving Beijing could be so hard, like I still let my student to complain about what make them dislike Beijing; the pollution; the traffic; the social hierarchy; the cab driver who doesn’t care about you and his own life; the overwhelmed Olympic brainwash makes you bend your knee and cry to god ‘give me a break!’… Of course, not to mention nothing can compare to a 2 yuan ‘yanjing’ or ‘tshingtao’ after a long day; a street ‘chuaer’ vendor near your doorstep, a cheap cab ride home with a earful of cab driver’s political science lecture; a forest of legs and heels after a long nice summer breath near ‘gongti’…… all of these loves and hates come in waves, the complex feeling of these moment made a slideshow in my memory, time certainly flies like a blink of eye…as I’m packing up and preparing to move on, I discovered, there is a actually a whole new way of looking at these things…

Life goes on, goodbye my lover, goodbye my friends, you have been the one for me, I will always remember it…

San

BJC

     It's a big contentious when u talk about history of any city, whether is rome, paris, tokyo, new york...wanted to spend some time research for E-commer's project last night, one of the google link led me to a Youtube video, been fucking around on youtube since then...

     the video showed beijing's 2007 urban development plan,  the city is losing its so-called traditional value, lots of old hutong area had been restored with high-scaled villas, in traditional courtyard style. some hutong residence were changed to commercial areas and western architecture concept is merging in to replace the city's landmark - 70's soviet style apartment complex...

     if u ever been to beijing, u probably will remember the city’s oldest pedestrian district, once was flourished with hutong, migrant merchant, and “lao beijing” (people who lived their through generations) wangfujing area, has successfully turned into a massive commercial shopping block. without considering the historical value it preserves, many of its surrounding neighborhood, its in a state of flux in decision. obviously, the most "ideal" situation would be to leave it as is...but the fact is, the matter of talking about beijing, ,toronto, new york, hongkong, or any world city that is undergoing economic development naturally is govern by market forces, and what that often means is: changification. so u want to preserve this as is the whole piece, that's simply not realistic right now in beijing...

     we wanna preserve history, we wanna renovate back to the past. but u always have to ask yourself, what past are we going to renovate back to? because beijing has so much history you can sink a shovel and dig up something that is older than america itself, if the government wants to replace these hutong with “lao beijing” style: grey bricks, tile roof, and red accent on the wood. certainly they have architecture values, because they are late qing dynasty - republican era restructures... but aside of that, what's more important? what's more valuable being lost? what's priceless that being lost, it's this community texture, a non-american way of life, not depend on the car, entirely sustainable, a close-system neighborhood, very dense with greenery, very dense with humanity on the street... and i think anybody who spent some time in beijing knows the different between going to the lake (houhai) district and coming to dashilar (pedestrian street, near wangfujing), and going to soho (new comdo units)... my interpretation of beijing’s lifestyle is, very chilled, very laid back, ultimate stage of appreciation of life and relaxation. with its family-oriented social climate, there really isn’t anything more valuable and worth considerate other than family and day-to-day living. thus, with these west ideas, value and lifestyle swarming into ordinary beijinger’s life, flooding beijing with steel cold architectures, fast-paced, buzzing-bee liked work attitude, overall theme of “anything-for-money”… beijing has turning into a lonely city... i think rather than fighting over how we gonna renovate the city, its more valuable to maintain this community and this network,  it will reminds people that at one time and while it still is, when you look at the map, beijing, is a mass piece of urban design...

some of the photos of these areas are available in my photo please take a look…