Flat Beijing.
Beijing: the Six-Story City. Few buildings rose higher thanks to a law requiring both an elevator and a human operator — a law that effectively stunted building heights (and strengthened Chinese legs).
The saddest job I saw was that of elevator operator: small fresh-out-of-school girl shut in a metal box, away from fresh air and daylight, rising and dropping all day for the sole purpose of pressing your floor button.
Such was government-guaranteed employment.
At university gates, guards stood at attention night and day, bored, rocking on their feet. Teams of men stooped along highway shoulders, snipping grass with scissors. Women slept in narrow glass booths at subway stations, keeping watch in case the escalator broke down.
In Forbidden City buildings, employees slouched over little radios, huddling in their coats against the bitter January freeze. They didn’t speak when I entered, didn’t even glance up – just kept each hand pressed between stool and thigh, rocking slightly. How must they have felt on their first day of work? — the Forbidden City! Glorious place to report every day! — only for the daily grind to creep in, leaching motivation month by month until finally they wished to be anywhere else.
Once assigned to a work unit, could a person later be assigned elsewhere? A few of my students bemoaned their major, forestry, precisely because they were stuck with it for life. Did the Communist Party consider grass clippers, elevator button pushers, exhibit minders to be placed and settled for life?
I wondered whether I would choose a mindless sinecure over abject poverty. If I had to support a family, I decided, the question was a no-brainer.
But what a dehumanizing solution.
Flat Beijing.
