I first heard the rumor yesterday afternoon: Hongmiao is getting torn down. This happens to be where I live and have lived for the last nine months. Obviously, if this were the States, that would be a pretty ridiculous notion. But this is Beijing, where the ridiculous, in the form of large-scale government intervention and investment, happens on a daily basis. He suggested that my apartment would be gone in two months and the entire school at which ACC is run would also go the way of the dinosaur, presumably endangering ACC's existence as well. His source - a friend of the father of a Chinese friend of his, sort of a tenuous link. The second person to bring it up was a teacher, a more reliable source except that he heard about it from the first person. So I was understandably skeptical.

I forgot about the notion for a while until on the walk back home, when it somehow came to mind again. I felt an urge to ask every one of the storekeepers who I walk past on a daily basis, the hairdresser with the ridiculous hair, the girl at the makeup shop, the other girl with the hat who's always at the nuts shop. Instead I went into my favorite bubble tea joint, and so the third person to tell me about it was one of the two girls who work there. Not just Hongmiao, a swath stretching from Chaoyang North road to that road where the 1 line is, and from jingwang bridge to the fourth ring road, will be wiped off the map. The entire area, encompassing maybe 100,000 people. The size of most towns in the states. What for? Here's the shocking part: a huge entertainment complex! Everyone's going to have to move elsewhere.

The girl was grinning the whole time as she said it, more in an impish way than anything else. What are you going to do? I asked. Where are you going to go? "I don't live here anyway" she says smiling. huh? Nope, she's from Tangshan, in Hebei province. "Tangshan? where the earthquake was?" I inquire. yep. that's the one. Home of one of the deadliest natural disasters in history, 1976. Covered up by the Chinese government after it happened, which would seem impossible when 200,000+ people die, but there you go. That's what happens when you control the media. But we don't really talk about that aspect. Instead she tells me about a hometown where the ground shakes four times a week, where the earth underneath is a big concave void because they're still digging out the bountiful coal hiding down there. All the while she's still smiling. How can she still smile?

Something about the world doesn't feel very stable at the moment. I'm reminded of a movie we watched in my Italian film class back at yale: Una Giornata Particulare, a Special Day, about a perfectly ordinary encounter on the day of Hitler's visit to Rome. Big changes left and right, and more than anything: Earthquakes. I'm the last person to believe in some kind of scientific conspiracy theory. But at the same time it's hard not to be disturbed by the large-scale death of people who happen to live in the wrong place. And at the same time the juxtaposition is with the ordinary: The banality of my daily life where I go to the little place downstairs to eat 5 times a week, buy my sesame balls at the entryway to the muslim restaurant and drink cup after cup of milk tea. Sometimes I go to starbucks. The same people are around day in and day out. I've started recognizing the dogs that walk around in the morning and evening. This is my neighborhood! It is in some ways insignificant, unideal, full of old apartments, but people have adapted to living here as they adapt to millions of climates across the world and seem to be doing just fine with it.

The natural instinct in the case of something that's about to go extinct is to do one's very best to make sure it is remembered. Humans have almost an irrational obsession with extinction, even. Why do we care so much about a panda instead of a kangaroo? Why do we like dodos so much even though they lasted about 20 years in the presence of predators? But when it comes down to it, I don't know how to go about chronicling the ordinary. I do crazy stuff all the time, hence why I love my life in Beijing. But in a way it kills me that I haven't tracked every meal and step just for someone to realize - wait, these people based their entire lives here. Every day around the Hongmiao intersection old men cluster around and play Chinese chess and cards. two or four people playing, dozens of people standing around them. The other day I saw a newbie - looked too young to be in the crew, but there he was, loitering around leaning against a wall observing a chinese chess game played with dirty, handmade pieces.

I know details that are relevant only and exactly to my daily life. The 117 bus is right outside, the 101 bus is in the middle lane. If you start walking on the left turn arrow at the intersection you'll get a head-start. The jianbing seller at hongmiao intersection shows up at 11pm or so but not if it's raining or too cold. A wealth of information that was going to be irrelevant the second I leave, but now will refer to a fantasm on top of being irrelevant. I will come back some day and there will not be a single trace of anything, most likely not even a landmark to rely on. I am already living in a world of ghosts.

So why was she smiling? Because this is the irony of progress. We move from towns where there's an earthquake every week to shiny beijing until your shop gets destroyed and you cycle back to being woken up by tremors in the middle of the night. All for the sake and glory of entertainment. Whose entertainment? 谁也说不清。 No one really knows. Wave of the future.

You know, anyone over 32 in China was alive during the Cultural Revolution. You see people in their 50s and 60s walking around collecting plastic bottles for 1 jiao a piece (in other words, 70 for a dollar US) because the vaunted revolution never bothered teaching them any actual skills. Chinese people are tough. No wonder she was smiling. Whatever curveball fate decides to throw next is nothing.

A long time ago, CUEB (my school) was the only thing out here. I've heard people talk about playing in ponds and the forest around this area when they were kids. In the 80s CUEB was like an outpost on the wild frontier, while now it is an obsolete holdfast at the edges of the thriving Central Business District. And now it's Hongmiao's turn to fall within the event horizon of the black hole that is modern Beijing.