Beijing, by Jacqueline Tao

Old Beijing: Fusion or Contradiction

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By Jacqueline Tao

I once read in National Geographic that if you were to spend one minute perusing each stall in a Chinese shopping complex, you wouldn’t make it out until one month later. As someone who’s been to China’s big cities many times, I believe this statistic. I’ve seen the unending displays of things for sale, and have personally been lured into wandering for hours on end. As always, these shopping havens were still thriving when I visited Beijing and Shanghai this February. In terms of popularity and fashion, they had visibly taken a back seat to a new kind of consumerism. Huge, glamorous department stores that house (real) designer brands have sprung up everywhere, advertised by shoppers on the street carrying three or four designers’ shopping bags like it’s no big deal. During this trip while I was walking down a newly remodeled “old Beijing” style street, I came across an H&M store nestled among shops of old school medicines and cloth shoes. Farther down my walk was a host of foreign brands, from Zara to Uniqlo. Sandwiched somewhere in the middle of the shopping spectrum, the fusion of Chinese architecture and the most modern shops had successfully married the two opposing cultures. As a student normally nestled in the Lamorinda community, I hear about the developments happening halfway across the world, but only by going did I actually experience it. Sadly, many of the uber-cheap shopping malls or the narrow, noisy alleys of Beijing are sacrificed to the modern trends. From the perspective of a traveler from Lamorinda, I thought that that H&M store was very charming, and moreover it seemed to have saved a figment of the old Beijing architecture and culture that is in many places on the verge of demolition. In case it disappears, I made certain to capture a pictures and store fond memories.

Jacqueline Tao started as a book reviewer for Be the Star You Are!® when she was 11 and continued volunteering in various positions, most importantly as teen chairperson and event coordinator. Through her travels she has been able to get a taste of many different cultures and places.