Beijing Quotes

“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'

All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:

There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!

Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“It would be nice to think that the menacing aspects of North Korea were for display also, that the bombs and reactors were Potemkin showcases or bargaining chips. On the plane from Beijing I met a group of unsmiling Texan types wearing baseball caps. They were the 'in-country' team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, there to inspect and neutralize North Korea's plutonium rods. Not a nice job, but, as they say, someone has to do it. Speaking of the most controversial reactor at Yongbyon, one of the guys said, 'No sweat. She's shut down now.' Nice to know. But then, so is the rest of North Korean society shut down—animation suspended, all dead quiet on the set, endlessly awaiting not action (we hope) or even cameras, but light.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“Beijing? Freedom? Oil and water.”
― Victor Robert Lee, Performance Anomalies

“Don't be tricked by the verisimilitude into forgetting this is fiction!”
― Sha Li

“Austere government buildings lined the edges, standing in the square an individual felt like a speck of dust.”
― Sylvia Vetta, Brushstrokes in Time

“Amazing that Americans can obtain so much mass, approximate stuff of two or three people in Beijing.”
― Andrew Durbin, Mature Themes

“祁老爷子想到他的子孙“将要住在一个没有兔儿爷的北平，随着兔儿爷的消灭，许多许多可爱的、北平特有的东西，也必定绝了根！”
― Lao She

“There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature’s God in America and China’s Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.”
― Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order

“Now, I was unemployed in Beijing, and my former ambition seemed like the pollution that smudged the sky, a great green cloud composed of a billion different particles of fear and uncertainty. Without a career I hardly knew who I was anymore.”
― Ann Mah, Mastering the Art of French Eating: Lessons in Food and Love from a Year in Paris

“Celebrating Valentine's Day is like falling in love with Beijing all over again.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“too late for discretion, too early for breakfast”
― Anthony Tao, We Met in Beijing

“The Earth is upside-down. We could fall to freedom / If we believed in it”
― Anthony Tao, We Met in Beijing

“Swallows and peonies heralded spring, a time for filled spring pancakes, fresh spring onions, and lavish spring feasts where the adults drank wine and extemporized verses of poetry. The hot days of summer brought crisp, fragrant melons cooled in well water and refreshing pickles made of tiny cucumbers and tinier ears of corn. With fall came sweet crabs, steamed and served with dark rice vinegar and ginger, eaten in the preferred Chinese method: with great abandon.”
― Gabrielle Hamilton, The Best American Food Writing 2021: Essays on Restaurants, Culture, and the Uniting Power of Food