Life in China (or at least in Beijing) is definitely reviving. I decided to do my food shopping today around the evening rush hour to see how busy things were. The picture on the left is in Gulou and on the right near Sanlitun. I’d say that with a few exceptions things are... 
...50-70% back to normal. The motorcycle shop not far from my home (on the left) is open, as it was last week, but now there actually seem to be customers milling about. The famous chestnut shop (on the right) has a line in front of it, not as long as during normal times, but...
...(except for Sunday) longer than any time last week, and people no longer seem to think it is necessary to keep a meter distance between people. The neighborhood liquor store is open, as it was last week, but the chairs in the door mean you cannot enter but rather have to...
...ask for what you want from the outside.
I decided to take a subway to the Sanlitun area, where I do my food shopping, and was surprised at how busy the subway had gotten. I counted 26 people in my car on the #6 line through the center of Beijing (below) and 16 people in my...
I decided to take a subway to the Sanlitun area, where I do my food shopping, and was surprised at how busy the subway had gotten. I counted 26 people in my car on the #6 line through the center of Beijing (below) and 16 people in my...
...car on the #10 line, which follows the Third Ring Road. This is nowhere near the packed cars we’d normally expect during rush hour, but two weeks ago the subway was almost completely empty, with no more than two people in my car. Buses however were still almost empty, with...
...no more 2-5 people in each bus that passed me.
The Sanlitun shopping mall was busier than it had been last week, with quite a few people milling about. All the shops were open and many had 2-3 customers in them, except for the Apple store, which had a lot more people than...
The Sanlitun shopping mall was busier than it had been last week, with quite a few people milling about. All the shops were open and many had 2-3 customers in them, except for the Apple store, which had a lot more people than...
...last week. I went upstairs to see if the restaurants were also open. They all are, and some had a few people in them (even though it is too early for dinner), but I was told they would all close at 8 pm, instead of the normal 10 pm
It seems we are still facing a two-tiered...
It seems we are still facing a two-tiered...
...revival. There is plenty of traffic on the streets, to the point where traffic jams are again a problem, although only during rush hour, unlike normal times when there are traffic jams throughout the day in these parts of Beijing. This suggests that middle class Beijing is...
...more than half way back to normal and at this rate should be substantially there within a week or two. Working class Beijing, however, is still lagging, if the subways and especially the buses are anything to go by. Young high school and college graduates are also going to...
...have a hard time finding jobs. This doesn’t completely surprise me. I have two pianos at my house (musicians often do performances here) and there is a young migrant worker who comes by regularly to tune and repair them. He sent me a message yesterday saying that his boss...
...is going bankrupt and that he was leaving Beijing that day to return home. Although consumption demand associated with things like piano tuning and repair have only dipped temporarily, and will definitely revive, these businesses were simply living too precarious a life to...
...survive even a 1- or 2-month downturn. It is going to be migrant workers, the young, and the self-employed who will end up taking the brunt of the downturn.
