Childhood is only beautiful for those adults who can't remember.
--Francois Truffaut
Ever since the first time I went back to Beijing in 2003, I have my head wrapped in a never ending stream of nostalgic inflections. The things I was most nostalgic for were: Hutongs, Slow Beijing buses, Empty Subways, Oddly placed, but landmark buildings that served as knowledge bank for my childhood's many curiosities. At least, these were the things I thought I was nostalgic for, and as a result, I took many pictures of them when I visited China. At a well known Art School interview, I event professed that my main interest was in "Culture in Transition." Meaning an old country shedding its old architecture and culture to be absorbed into a profit-driven, capitalist culture with a plethora of shiny buildings and cars that replace the traditional, undeveloped methods of living and moving around.
However, this time when I was in Beijing, I found myself no longer enchanted by the objects and places driven by nostalgia. I still went to the first apartment my family lived in, walked around the streets that my parents used to bike me through in the 80s, and snapped pictures of brick walls and blankets hanging on strings, as such. But the pictures came out crappy, and from them I could only see a reflection of my personal disinterest, in these so-called 'nostalgic' locales. The bare fact as it surfaces now, is that I no longer have any interest in the Beijing of my childhood. I was not in love with the city when I lived there, I only began to love it when I left, after I had gained a comparative knowledge of urban and suburban life.
Beijing is an old city becoming very new due to the people who have moved there and the buildings that have sprouted up. Life in old Beijing was cramped, dirty, moist with human waste. Life in new Beijing is cramped, sweaty, dusty, but if you can afford it, a nice secluded, high-rise apartment that offers tranquility not before possible. In essence, Beijing is more Western now, and it has matured to a point that one can enjoy a Western-style living in Beijing without experiencing any clumsiness customary in the painful transition from a third-world to a first-world. All that happened while I was gong and in the first half of last decade (hence the last two times I visited I deeply craved a nostalgic Beijing). Of course this is not to say all of the city enjoys this convenient, comfortable and protected Western style of life, but I can unashamedly say that I enjoyed it, and this is how I intend to live if I do move back to Beijing.
The effervescent world that exists at the end of a person's nostalgic vision, is it really paradise? Or is it just a mis-colored blotch of what we call 'unsophisticated youth' where the adult, mature thinker substitutes the memories of his youthful ignorance with more pleasing, but also more theoretical terms such as 'innocence,' 'simplicity,' 'spirituality,' and the worst of all, 'purity?'
I am not an expert on purity and I dare not claim so because there is something impure in everything I do. As progressive as I am I take a lot of the privileges of a developed world for granted and indulge in its excesses. Maybe this is why my father's life seems happy, because he is doing the exact same. There is no need to hold back on one's enjoyment of life's pleasures if one's economic situations allow for a status upgrade. Beijing has become a city where if you have money, you can live a wonderful life, and if you don't have money, life is not very different from fifteen years ago. There is no need to be 'nostalgic' when one is in Beijing. That is only non-existent for the rich who have allowed themselves to live accordingly to their wealth, or for those who use 'nostalgia' as an excuse for their failures to ride the changes to get ahead.
Nostalgia is easy to summon when the person is not burdened by the actualities of the imagined, nostalgic past.