Beijing was the first stop on our two-week trip to China, and I arrived feeling a mix of excitement and unease. Growing up in the United States, most of what I had heard about China came through a negative or adversarial lens, especially when it came to internet censorship. Those feelings followed me off the plane. The fingerprint scanner, followed by a massive wall of cameras, did little to calm my nerves. Immigration moved slowly, and I couldn’t help but notice a separate line set aside for travelers associated with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Once we finally made it through, we bought a Chinese SIM card from a vending machine and headed into the city, still processing those first impressions.
Sitting in the taxi, I noticed the roads were well maintained: no graffiti, no litter, and cars that were, for the most part, modern and electric. As we rounded a highway off-ramp, I caught a clear view of the city—rows of glass-box office buildings and residential towers, largely indistinguishable from one another. It was only a glimpse, but I wondered whether this architectural blandness reflected a deeper strain of Chinese collectivism. Once we reached the local streets, however, the city’s personality began to emerge.
