Return to Innocence

Bei Jing to me is all about memory, especially memories from my childhood and adolescence. I like old Beijing, the time before new development took place. I particularly like the old style architectures such as “Hu Tong” and “Si He Yuan”. Some of them survived from new developments and now they have been protected by the local government as a way to remember history, remember who we are and where we are from.

I needed to drop off some documents for my mum to her previous working place, the no. 25 middle school, where I also studied for a year and a half. The school has more than one hundred and thirty years of history and you are able to find some old style architecture there. It has been changed a lot since I left but I was able to dig some of my memories out of my brain. When I was standing on the playground, looking at boys and girls running and playing, I was thinking I must be looked the same when I was at their age. The important things for them would be which NBA team is going to won the championship this year and which girl from a lower grade they are going to follow after school. It was the most memorable time of my life even though it wasn’t full of happiness.

Come out from the school, heading south, you can reach one of the oldest shopping streets of Bei Jing, the “Wang Fu Jing”. Nothing much left from the ancient time, only the newly made sculptures try to capture the old days. Forget is the start of change, of moving forward, possibly. So I picked the color of my new Crocs which I would never get before. The limited Bei Jing Olympics edition released in China which the colors of China’s national flag. Maybe I would like to try some changes, little by little.

Photos of the No. 25 Middle School

=================================================================

Photos of "Wang Fu Jing"