On almost every sidewalk in Beijing you’ll find a strip of bricks, different from the others, stretching in a nearly unbroken line all around the city, from Sanlitun to Wudaokou. Probably you’ve never noticed them. They stretch the four sides of a city block, perpendicular lines meeting at the point where the sidewalk slopes down to touch the pavement. They even lead deep into the city’s metro stations. The bricks have specially molded raised ridges atop them and are often even a different color, which is ironic because they are clearly meant to be used by blind people.

I’ve never seen any blind people use them. In fact I’ve never seen anyone pay particular attention to them at all. And I find it impossible to imagine the high-level government meeting where it was decided to install them. But you’ll find me walking along them whenever possible, especially when the weather is warm enough to wear thin-soled skateboard shoes. It’s a free foot massage.

But in China, a foot massage is never just a foot massage. According to TCM, your meridians are all closely connected to your feet, and it is through these meridians which your qi–your life force–flows. In Beijing, intentionally or not, there is a subtle grid for the stimulation of the qi layed almost invisibly all over the city. I have never seen this in any other Chinese city, or any city on the world in fact: free massages for the soul.

Walk them sometime. Feel the uneven ridges pushing into the soles of your feet, stimulating your qi, relaxing you, slowing you into the rhythm of the city and its people. This is Beijing. It’s a good thing, something accidental, something that few people ever note. But it’s  there, right under your feet. Even blind people see it.

Beijing gets a bad rap. My friends in Shanghai alternately lionize it and fear it. Much of it has been destroyed–culturally and physically–both because of sheer greed and through deliberate exercise of imperial authority. These days too often the air is choked with unbelievable noxious poison and a free foot massage means nothing when you cannot breath. It’s heart-breaking, but at least it touches the heart.

And so when I heard the song Beijing, Beijing by Beijing-born singer Wang Feng I was immediately moved. I’ve never heard a better song about Beijing. It captures what I’ve described above–the beauty and heartache.

Here is the video:

And here is my translation of the lyrics

When I walk these streets
My heart is never at peace
Beyond the roar of engines and sounds of the machines
I seem to hear its flickering heartbeat

 

Here I laugh
Here I cry
Here I live
And here I’ll die

 

Here I prayed
Here I got lost
Here I sought
And here I’ve lost

 

Beijing… Beijing…

 

The coffee house is just three blocks away from the square
Same as the distance between the neon and the moon
In the midst of struggle, people comfort and hug each other
Searching and chasing, grasping at shattered dreams

 

Here I laugh
Here I cry
Here I live
And here I’ll die

 

Here I prayed
Here I got lost
Here I sought
And here I’ve lost

 

Beijing… Beijing…

 

If one day I have to leave
I hope you’ll bury me here
Here, I can feel my existence
Here, there are so many things I long for

 

Beijing… Beijing…

Beijing in the past has been worse. It’s also been better. If you don’t give up on it, it won’t give up on you.