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Originally Posted by LessinSF
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I was in Beijing in 2008 for the Olympics. CCP had done massive things to it’s people. Millions had been ordered to relocate from the city to the country to empty the city a bit. Factories shut down for a year in an (unsuccessful) attempt to clean the air.
But the saddest thing was what they did to the Hutongs (sp?). These were the traditional neighborhoods. One story old wooden homes and shops. The Party did not want foreign visitors to see them. So for a while they were tearing them down and putting up high rises. But they ran out of time.
And there were still plenty left, including along the Marathon route. Some of those were outside our hotel. To hide them the Party put up walls with pretty propaganda people. Every 20 yards there’d be a small entrance to the neighborhood. We walked in and shopped there daily.
The shop owners didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak Mandarin, but I know they loved to have visitors seeing their shops. They had been expecting to be part of thousands of visitors from everywhere seeing their place, buying shit. Instead their government tried to hide their existence. China doesn’t give a shit about its people. The extreme lockdowns are to spare the Party from embarrassment.
