Beijing Urban Planning Museum: Tuesday, May 22nd

Beijing has this fascinating museum where they show the past and the future of how Beijing is going from hutongs to the sky-rises. The most interesting part was the film about the future. It talked about how it was going to move out people from the city to newly created suburbs. It hardly talked about improving the life the residents, it was more about increasing it’s standards to that of the west to create the feeling that they are as, or more, advanced than the west. Unfortunately they made it sound like it came at the cost of allowing people to let them live where they want. The film ended with the line “We are heading towards invented in China instead of made in China.” This was very curious because if this is the case, the future could be very different than today. If China is not making the goods, who will? I wondered how they were going to promote technology invention if they watch creative freedom so carefully. If they are going to accomplish this, they are going to have to start with schools and I wonder if that is how they are going about it. I learned a lot about China, their goals and priorities from this one film. The goals included cutting back on cars, increasing libraries and adding more green to the very grey city. But it wasn’t the goals that surprised me; it was how they went about it, with vigorous determination with the people only slightly apart of the equation.