Avenue of Eternal Peace and the Halfhearted Steel Rainbow Bridge

Ah, Chang’an Jie. I just opened up this China Daily article about the longest and widest street in China exactly at the same moment as Green Day came on my stereo. You know them from our youth, or from that hit jam “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.”

At the junction of Dongdaqiao Lu at Jianguomennei Dajie, where the boxy green and red Silk Street Market has a fleet of tourist buses parked in front of it at all seasons, and to which the electric blue cylindrical twin towers across the road form a perfect counterpoint, a heavy shower began. It was pelting.

I darted inside the mammoth Beijing Friendship Store where miles and miles of jade jewelry, Kunqu Opera masks and cheongsams in floral patterns draped around mannequins with sad eyes were lined up in an intense display.

It stopped completely as soon as I bought an umbrella from a magazine kiosk, just before going up the Jianguomen bridge. At the other end of the bridge, a halfhearted steel rainbow rose from either side, stopping short of forming an arch.

I totally know the feeling this author is trying to convey here: you sort of want to try to be impressed by some over-the-top magic trick, like turning a street into an airplane runway, or replacing homes with buildings the size of mountains, or making events just disappear, but you just end up feeling really bad for everyone involved and you just want it all to end.

But you’re part of one of those audiences for television, there’s just no hiding out there.

(He should have followed the example of authority and brought an umbrella.)

As I stepped inside Xidan subway station to catch the train home, and the busker playing on his saxophone turned the recorded supporting music on, in full volume, I pretended these lights, the music, the spare but cheerful crowd out on Beijing’s streets on a windy Sunday evening, were all there for me.

At that moment I felt I too was a part of the celebration of the founding of a new China, as indeed all you who walk that resplendent stretch from now on would be.