how can you stand living here?
 

Beijing....I'm back on business and sitting in traffic for hours and hours on end whilst coughing up a lung. It's hard to think of a less desirable city to live in.

Only 50% of the private cars are allowed on the streets every other day, so many desire to live there.

Glad you are back contributing to the problem of congestion,

Beijing is a great city, without the people, and cars it would be easier to move about.

Enjoy

The weather was gorgeous, albeit rather chilly, this morning...so I'm pretty sure the (general) pollution wasn't to blame, although of course actual levels when stuck in traffic can be considerably higher.

Everywhere has its ups and downs, but generally we actually love BJ. If I had to commute by car to work rather than a quick cycle or walk, I might change my mind, grant you.

tb

The odd/even drill only happens on special occasions. The rest of the time, traffic sucks.

I can think of lots of less desirable cities to live in (as well as better ones). Traffic is bad, air can be bad, bureaucracy is annoying, and Beijing isn't for everybody. But it has a lot to offer and if you live in Beijing, you learn about the Secret Methodologies to mitigate the downsides.

They are having a special occasion., and I feel much safer in BJ than Paris.

What's the occasion?

Always on in Beijing.
In any case I love it there. To each his own. And pollution is down. Coughing? You should see a doctor, there may be something wrong with your health.

There have been talks about making odd-even rationing permanent, but thus far ~4 days/year has been typical.

I was just in Beijing last week. The air was indeed considerably cleaner; and so too were the streets. However, it was just as unpleasant for me as before, perhaps more so, because the atmosphere felt like the edge of war, or something to that extent:

* At least two security checks between the street and the general gathering area in Beijing-South Rail Station. (In rail stations of other cities, it was still one checkpoint.)
* Maps showing up in even innocuous lifestyle magazines depicting China's boundaries with a lot of dotted lines in the South China Sea.
* Stores and businesses named "Diaoyutai" have cropped up.
* Walk around the streets in the morning, you can often hear military-style wake-up drills from both civilian and military organizations.
* Walk the streets some more, and the casual conversations you hear invariably include the term "Riben-ren" (the Japanese).
* I won't mention the "Japanese Visitors Get Out Of My Store" signs (well, I just did, but...), as they seem to be more prevalent in the Lower Yangtze, inversely proportional to distance from Nanjing.
* Watch TV in the evening, and it's war movies, war miniseries, war documentaries, and military news on channel after channel.

None of these were entirely new, but I thought that the tensions were more amplified this time around.

I'll add by saying that, in the last two years (and including this recent trip), in Beijing as well as in other Chinese cities, I have had more than a handful of conversations in which the Chinese person I talked to said this to me, (paraphrasing) "I'm trying to make as much money as I can, so that I can move to America as fast as I can." Those, the immigration lawyer ads in the back of Chinese inflight magazines, and the glossy brochure I found in my hotel room selling EB-5 immigration, tell another story about life in China, IMO.

Perhaps expats and Westerners in general have a more pleasant view of Beijing, because they know they have a real home someplace else?

This is the view of most middle class Chinese in big cities I think. I have a couple of staff who told me they are saving to move abroad so their kid doesn't have to grow up in China.

I think lots of expats have the same view of their time in China, just make money and get out. I used to feel that way but now I can't imagine not living in the French concession or Jingan. I don't want to leave my life in Shanghai almost as bad as I don't ever want to come to Beijing again. Yesterday did have clear skies...how's it looking today?:p

Ha! I would certainly take Shanghai over Beijing any day. But before that, I would want a say on Chengdu first. Or anywhere in Yunnan. :) We all have our likes and dislikes about things that we've encountered in China, but I've never been ingratiated with much of Beijing to say that I miss certain things about it when I'm home in L.A. Not in the least is the annoying, almost self-righteous Beijinger accent, and IMO Beijing's charm goes downhill from there. :)

I started a bj v sh thread here many years ago, and my view hasn't really changed much since. Bj is far more interesting/fun/engaging and the people are generally more chill. BUT in terms of quality of life, sh bests it by a country mile.

Furthermore, I must say that I do genuinely like being in Shanghai these days (I.e. almost no desire to travel elsewhere).

Regarding bj accents, I agree they can be annoying especially when overdone by young embassy staffers. However, I'll take that over the Mandarin that's spoken in half of the south, and er hua actually actually is proper and can sound pretty nice if subtle.

This is true. Admittedly, the few times when I heard beautifully-spoken, almost aristocratic-sounding Mandarin were all in Beijing. But in the same vein, the typical Beijinger usually overuse "er" to point of sounding like a broken record:

"Lao-pengyou'r, wo-men'er yiqi'r qu'r chi'r fan'er!' (老朋友，我們一起去吃飯！ "Let's go eat, old friend!"). Gawd! :)