Beijing the city and the years

Number of pages: 522 pages The city means memory, maturity, beginning, end, or starting again. The city, in short, is the vessel of time (the countryside is not like that; the countryside is time itself). This is how the Chinese writer Ning Kin begins the introduction of his book about his city Beijing, and draws in forty-four chapters a map of the city since the fifties, in a journey between the present and the past, shedding light on its main landmarks: the alley, the street, and the courtyard. We will see with the camera of the writer's memory his neighborhood where he lived, his house with its upper floor and windows, and we will observe how time and place intersect with the movement of history in the city from the Cultural Revolution to migration to the countryside. This book is a documentary work and a mirror reflecting a city whose old landmarks disappeared in favor of modernization and contemporization.