Sanlitun is in Chaoyang. Listen to Sanlitun crackling with neon life, Chaoyang laughing across its new skyscrapers and the cranes building more - a vibrant young man who has discovered that life is only beginning and that foreign women find him handsome in a suit. Ten years ago Chaoyang had been the poor man's district, waterlogged in its farmlands.
Sanlitun Bar Street is luminous after dusk, the sounds of entertainment eviscerating. My friend goes there with him every Saturday. The waiters stand outside the street, chanting the English they knew. Hello! Hello! Beer! When they see a white face they thrust themselves in front of it and go for the arm.
Both of them stumbled out of a bar into the fresh air, their steps uncertain from the alcohol.
'I am thinking of moving apartments soon,' he said as they slipped into a little alley that led to the labyrinth of old Beijing, the hutong. The brick of the dusty courtyard homes filtered the thunder from the bars. There are very few lights in a hutong at night.
'You have found one that you like more?' she asked.
'The Uncle in the fish-cake stall says he knows the landlord of an apartment that is cheaper and closer to the school.'
In the dimness of the light my friend bumped into a row of bicycles. The ****l rang and the bicycles began to crash one after the other. A little yellow light went on in one of the scratched windows and someone began to curse. Laughing, both of them ran out of the alley and back to Bar Street.
'Would you like to share my new apartment with me?' he shouted as they returned to the blinding light of the traffic.
'Yes, I would like that very much!'
It would have been romantic if they had looked at the stars. But stars are rarely seen in the haze of Beijing.


*

I've gone walking in a hutong during lunch hour in spring. Pots of rice and cabbage boiled outside sheds made of iron sheets. The aroma of garlic and meat coming from the makeshift vents smelled of a home. Many of the crumbling brick walls washed in dirty white were marked with the word chai. Chai means to demolish.