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China is My Blood

“I feel very lucky. It combines two things: China is changing so fast, which never happened before in the whole world, and it combines with Beijing’s changes for the 2008 Olympics. I lived in Munich from 1969 to 1972 (Munich hosted the Olympics in 1972). There was little change there. Beijing would have changed anyway, but the way Beijing is changing is unique in history,” he said in an interview with Beijing 2008.

“I was born in Hong Kong. My father was a reporter for many years, and his life’s ambition was to live in China. Actually, China is in my blood,” he said. Before becoming TIME’s Beijing bureau chief in spring 2006, Elegant visited China many times but never stayed long.

So when he and his family moved to Beijing, Elegant felt it was like a dream come true: “I’ve been waiting for a long time.”

“Chinese people are changing, the society is changing. We set up a special blog to talk about the changes. It has changed so fast since the 1980s that it has become a really different country and a different ‘world’,” he said. “I have noticed many slogans on the city’s streets and even highways, such as ‘Beijing huanying ni’ (Beijing Welcomes You), ‘being civilized citizens’ and more.”

“Architecture in Beijing is wonderful. The National Grand Theatre and the Bird’s Nest [China’s new National Stadium, which will serve as the Olympic Stadium for Beijing 2008] are extraordinary architectural pieces. People from all over the world will come to Beijing to view the architecture. There are no similarly impressive structures in the world. I’m looking forward to visiting the working sites of these places, and I’m interested in the changes being made based on practical considerations at these sites.” he said.

Elegant is planning to do several cover stories on China for the American public, whom he says are often still woefully uninformed about China. He said a Chinese student he interviewed told him that a high school exchange student from the United States’ rural Mid-West brought chocolate to China as a gift because she didn’t think it was available in shops.” He chuckled as he recounted the story.

“During the Games, we will probably have eight reporters and up to 15 photographers. Sports Illustrated [also belonging to TIME Incorporated], the biggest sports magazine in the world, will do more stories. We are anxious about covering the Beijing Olympics, but the application numbers are limited.”

The US news magazine is interested in China team’s training, as it is about human discipline and spirit, he said.

According to Elegant, the biggest change for the foreign correspondents in Beijing has come with the recently issued Regulations on Reporting Activities in China by Foreign Journalists during the Beijing Olympic Games and Preparatory Period.

“It is a huge deal for us. You can go anywhere; you can ask anybody anything. I always carry it around in my pocket. It is wonderful. The atmosphere is more relaxed. But sometimes we meet problems; they say your report is not related with Olympic Games. The main difficulty comes from local governments, such as in the countryside.

“On a meeting at Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, it was told that anything related to the Olympic Games can be reported by us. It is the greatest thing for China. It brings enormous changes to our work. In general, I’m surprised at the government’s changes; they are more open than before.

However, there is also a flip side to the changes that China has been going through.

“Changes are good. But some of them may make people feel sad, such as the disappearance of hutong,” he said.

“The Qianmen area [in Central Beijing] is an example. I went there when I first came to Beijing in 1994. Now most of the neighbourhood has been pulled down and is under renovation. It makes your heart a little bit sad. There are always difficult aspects to change. But the old neighbourhoods are good and the hutong is a really interesting issue.”

He admits, though, people may have also “romanticized” about life in old Beijing.

“A friend of mine lives in a siheyuan (Chinese courtyard) at Houhai. We talked to his neighbours. They don’t have toilets or showers. Six families live in a large siheyuan. The neighbourhood kids played there. There are sanluanche (tricycle) running in the hutongs on which vegetables are sold. People moved out and came back [to live in the hutongs], as they missed the community spirit.”

The question now is how to balance cultural and historical heritage protection and urban construction.

“There is a middle ground. Large cities like Rome, Paris and London all face this problem. Rome is a good example; it totally preserves the old city.” He thinks that while it is difficult for Beijing to preserve the things completely, the spirit should be kept.

“Billions of yuan are involved in the city plan in terms of preserving the old hutong, city walls and parks. TIME will do a big story on this.”