Life in China: '20 million people leading fake lives'

People queue in line to enter the military museum in Beijing. Photo / AP

By Lauren McMah

It was always going to be a controversial piece of writing.

Chinese blogger Zhang Wumao's damning assessment of life in Beijing and everyone who lived there was witty, but emotive, and it didn't hold back, reports news.com.au.

Zhang, who has lived in China's massive capital since moving there as a 25-year-old in 2006, used his essay to take aim at everything.

The enormous size of the crowded city. The unfriendliness of its residents. Its overwhelmed infrastructure and real estate market.

And the central, stinging message of the essay - which has been translated to English as "Beijing Has 20 Million People Pretending to Live There" - was that the city was on a quest to become one of the world's great metropolises but that was coming at the expense of its soul.

In China, pieces of writing like that don't go unnoticed.

The first response was on Chinese social media platforms, Weibo and WeChat, where it went viral.

Zhang published the article on WeChat on July 23, and in one night, it had been viewed more than 5 million times, according to Quartz.

Over the next two days it was picked up by Chinese news media and triggered debate across the country - and then it disappeared.

The Forbidden City in Beijing. Photo / 123rf

'Beijing is a tumour'

Zhang's essay outlined a number of key problems in his adopted city.

Firstly, Beijing's people had "no warmth", he said. And that was partly because they were too busy, and that was because their city was too big to get around.

Zhang pointed out Beijing was the equivalent to 2.5 times Shanghai, 15 times Hong Kong, 21 times New York, and 27 times Seoul, and it was getting bigger, fast.

"Beijing is a tumour, and no one can control how fast it is growing," he said.

He discussed how Beijing's many great wonders - the Imperial Palace, the Great Wall - brought pride to the city but left him feeling "emotionless".

"You can't make food out of these things," he said.

The Great Wall of China brings pride to Beijing. Photo / File

He poked fun at Beijing's older generations and rich kids with fake lives, and contemplated the city's many migrants, "who have no real estate from previous generations" and were locked out of the real estate bubble.

Wrapping up the essay, Zhang reflected on how Beijing was rapidly expanding and changing "with unprecedented speed" and that the process was eroding the city that its oldest residents once knew.

"For Beijing's new immigrants, the city is a distant place where they can't stay; for Beijing's old residents, the city is an old home they can't return to," Zhang wrote.

"The large numbers of people coming from outside the city have raised the housing prices in Beijing - they've created a flourishing city. But do you believe it? The native Beijingers might not need this kind of flourishing, and they also do not want higher housing prices. They are just like us, wanting a home that does not have too many people or too much traffic."

He said efforts this year to "brick up the core city of Beijing" had forced small shops, hotels and restaurants to close and forced more people in the low-end market to leave.

"This type of dressing-down and losing-weight city management frantically puts Beijing on the road to being a high-end and classy city. But it is becoming less and less of a convenient and liveable city, and it is becoming further and further removed from being a city with a tolerant and open spirit," he said.

"There are over 20 million people left in this city, pretending to live. In reality, there simply is no life in this city. Here, all we have is the dreams of some people, and the jobs of most people."

Beijing is the equivalent to 2.5 times Shanghai and 15 times Hong Kong. Photo / Mark Mitchell

'This is not approved of'

In the two days after Zhang unleashed his essay on social media, it triggered debate across China.

Many praised Zhang's "honest" writing, Quartz reported.

"Whether you fake it or you try hard, it's all okay: This is Beijing. It's not liveable, but you sure can make a living," one person commented.

Others took offence at his suggestion Beijing's residents lived fake, meaningless lives.

"What on earth gave him the courage to speak on behalf of 20 million Beijing people?" another person said.

"I am one of these 20 million people, and sorry, but my life is not fake - I am living it."

Men in military fatigues wait outside the Great Hall of the People as one of their member ties his shoelaces in Beijing. Photo /AP

Some people questioned Zhang's motives, suggesting he wrote a deliberately inflammatory piece for viral fame.

But on July 25, just two days after it was published, Zhang's article disappeared from social media sites and news sites. It was also pulled from Zhang's WeChat account, where he first published it.

State-run media then published a series of responses to Zhang that criticised his essay.

In a message published on Weibo, the state-run People's Daily wrote: "The essay 'Beijing Has 20 Million People Pretending to Live There' is a viral hit but is not approved of.

"There really is such a thing as the 'Big City Disease', and we do not need to pretend as if people in first-tier cities are not struggling and facing hardships.

"But in Beijing, both locals and outsiders are alive and kicking; they are all the more real because of their dreams. Making a living is hard, but it is the days of watching flowers blossom and wilt that are full of life. The city and its people don't have it easy, but they have to show some tolerance for each other and then they can both succeed."

An old woman carries a heavy load of pilfered coal across part of a dried-up river bed away from one of Beijing's largest power plants. Photo / AP

Xinhua News Agency also criticised Zhang's essay, along with state broadcaster CCTV, which said Beijing was not as cold as Zhang described it.

"Everyone already knows that it's not easy living in a big city. The future of Beijing is in the hands of competent, daring, and hardworking people who pursue their dreams," CCTV said.

Zhang has now apologised for the piece. In an interview with the Economic Observer, the writer said he was not discreet enough in his essay and asked the media "not to magnify my mistake into a matter of principle".

"This is an article with many problems," Zhang said, according to a translation in the Modern Chinese Literature and Culture centre at Ohio State University.

A police officer on duty near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo / Mark Mitchell

"In fact, I didn't intend to express anything. I was just being contrarian and trying to amuse readers. I didn't realise that I was wrongly contrarian and trying to amuse wrongly. I don't want to cause more troubles and make anyone upset about it."

But back on Weibo, many have questioned Zhang's need for an apology.

"Why you have to apologise?" one person wrote. "If the article was full of lies, it wouldn't have resonated with so many people. Is it because the author ruined some people's dreams by telling the truth?"