Fragments of Beijing
Dr Yandi Wang
Author’s notes
My story captures my fragmented memories and sensory impressions from my years living in Beijing, during the 1970s and 1980s, seen through the eyes of a young girl navigating the delicate crossroads of East and West. It is not merely a chronicle of events, but an exploration of ambience, aura, and the deep currents of feeling stirred by historical transitions. At its heart lies a meditation on the complex interplay between East and West that has shaped modern Chinese society.
The story offers a quiet departure from the autobiographies of life in China commonly published in the English-speaking world. It does not seek to persuade or to judge, nor does it attempt to shape experience into a binary of black and white. Rather, it offers a glimpse into the delicate complexity of a young girl’s inner world: a stream of emotion flowing from the heart, shaped by memories of sensation and observation.
Alongside the written narrative, I hope to interweave some of my own paintings and drawings, visual reflections that resonate with the moods and perceptions within the story, deepening its emotional and sensory layers. The artworks employ a mixed media technique, combining oil paint, acrylic, Chinese ink, charcoal and photography. This fusion of Eastern and Western materials mirrors the cultural intersections central to the book.
A Little Girl, Ink, Watercolour and Charcoal on Paper, © 2025 Yandi wang
Prologue
A day in October 2008, my British Airways flight landed at Beijing Capital International Airport. Forty minutes later, I arrived at a hotel in Sanlitun. Sanlitun, in the city’s east, shimmers with cafés, galleries, and designer brand stores. The air is restless with music and light. Nearby, sleek hotels rise above the noise. After checking in, I stepped into the street and wandered towards the nearby shopping plaza.
I found a café and took a seat. Across from me, beneath a wall of glass, a giant Dior advertisement flickered. The model’s crimson lips glowed under the lights, her gaze falling directly on me, as if to ask, Who are you? I replied, almost to myself, “I once belonged here. Now, I’m only passing through.”
My first home was in Sanlitun, in the earliest days of my life.
I tried to find traces of the neighbourhood I remembered, but everything had vanished even though only thirty years had passed. In the 1970s, Sanlitun was an undeveloped patch of land, overgrown with wild grass. It holds none of the ancient city’s quiet grace—neither the majesty of the Forbidden City, nor the lively hum of the old hutongs. What stood instead were rows of five-story brick buildings, quiet and austere, built in the Soviet style.
This style of building traces its roots to the Khrushchyovka, a Soviet-era style born in the 1950s. During the honeymoon period of Sino-Soviet friendship, structures like this rose across Beijing. They were four or five stories tall, square like matchboxes, stripped of ornament. Function ruled, pared down to its barest logic. Brick red was their only colour. Long forgotten, they stood silent, deep within my memory; my first encounter with red.
Not as red as the lips of the woman in the Dior billboard, a colour of passion and desire, it glowed in the streetlights, attempting to control speed and order. The red of Sanlitun, like the Forbidden City’s walls – colossal and untouchable. As a child, I instinctively regulated my emotions in their shadow. They formed an invisible boundary, shaping my first sense of authority and rules.
Authority is a presence, solemn and immovable, cloaked in the quiet weight of power. In time, authority became a silent force of discipline, turning me into an observer rather than a reckless participant. Faced with those undeniable, formidable presences, it made me quiet and sensitive. This “quietness” was, in truth, a way of adapting to an unknown and complex world, a natural strategy for safety. I often sat in corners, quietly listening to the adults’ conversations, whether or not I fully understood their words.
Whispering Adults. Ink on paper © 2025 Yandi Wang
One day, I overheard the adults talking. They said a Frenchman had arrived in Beijing, bringing with him a kind of dress that walked on stage. It was a red dress, they said, “so light it seemed it might take flight.” I tried to imagine it, but I couldn’t. A red dress that could fly? What kind of red was that? The red I knew was the red of the Forbidden Palace walls, of the brick buildings I grew up with, earthy, quiet, unmoving. That dress remained beyond my grasp, a blank shape in my mind.
The Eavesdropping Girl, Pen on Paper @ Yandi Wang
Many years later, I learned that the “man from France” was Pierre Cardin, born in Venice, later a citizen of France. In 1984, he was the first Western fashion designer to set foot in China. Without knowing it, he had also planted a small seed of curiosity and wonder in a little girl’s imagination.
In May of 2025, in a narrow alley in Venice, I came across this name once again at Spazio Creativo Pierre Cardin.
Signboard of Pierre Cardin in Venice, Photography 2025 @Yandi Wang
The alley is just wide enough for one. The afternoon sun squeezes in, and a light breeze carries the damp scent of the canal. I stop walking, just as in my childhood memories, the red dress appears. Childhood memories of the colour red have left me unusually sensitive to it, even now. Wherever I am, at any time, any glimpse of red instinctively draws my gaze. I no longer concern myself with who wears it. The face gently recedes, and the image remains blurred, leaving only the red to resonate in both memory and image.
Red · Venice, Photography 2025 @ Yandi Wang
Life moves in quiet circles, driving me forward like a windmill from Beijing and Shanghai to London, and now to Exeter, where I am settled. I walk slowly within the circles, pausing now and then to trace what once was a girl’s wonder, her joy, fears, sorrow, and piercing glimpse of death.
Drifting with the Wind Acrylic and Ink on Paper @ Yandi Wang
The Quiet Struggle, Watercolour and Ink on Paper © 2025 Yandi Wang
引言：
2008年10月，英航航班顺利从希思罗机场抵达北京首都国际机场。四十分钟后，我到达了位于三里屯的酒店, 北京东部一个时尚而奢华的地段，咖啡厅，餐厅，酒吧，艺廊、画廊、超市电影院， 苹果店，高级百货商店，星级酒店。办好入住手续后，我走出酒店，走向附近的时尚广场， 找了间咖啡厅坐下。咖啡厅对面玻璃幕墙下，一幅巨型迪奥广告幕屏下正闪烁着光彩，广告里的烈焰红唇女郎正注视着我，好似在问: “你是谁？”我回答：“我曾经属于这里， 现在只是路过。”
我出生后的第一个家，就在三里屯。我努力寻找记忆中三里屯的模样，然而，一切早已消失不见， 仅仅三十年的时间。上世纪七十年代的三里屯，遍地荒草，是一片尚未开发的土地。那时，三里屯没有一点千年古城北京的古韵与沉静：既没有紫禁城的恢弘气势，也没有市井胡同的热闹繁华。在这片荒野中，静静耸立着一排排前苏联风格的五层砖楼。
这种建筑风格可以追溯到赫鲁晓夫楼，一种诞生于20世纪50年代的苏联时代建筑风格。在中苏友好蜜月期，北京各地都涌现出类似的建筑。它们四五层楼高，方方正正，像火柴盒一样，没有任何装饰。功能至上，精简到只剩下最基本的逻辑。砖红色是它们唯一的颜色。它们早已被遗忘，静静地矗立在我的记忆深处；那是我第一次与红色相遇。
它不像迪奥广告牌上女人嘴唇的红，那是一种充满激情和欲望的颜色，也不像路灯下闪耀的光芒，试图掌控速度和秩序。三里屯的红色，如同故宫的城墙，雄伟而不可触及。孩提时代，我本能地在它们的阴影下调节自己的情绪，它们构成了一道无形的界限，使我初次意识到权威与规则的存在。
威严，是一种无形的气场，带着不可撼动的权威与庄重。就像小时候走在紫禁城的围墙下，我会在它面前自觉收敛情绪。于是，威严成了一种沉默的规范力量，让我成为一个观察者，而不是莽撞的参与者。面对那些不可忽视的强大存在，它让我变得安静、敏感。这种“安静”，其实是一种对未知与复杂世界的适应，也是一种本能的安全策略。我常常坐在角落，静静地听大人们聊天，不管是否能完全听懂他们的话语。
有一天，我听见大人们说，北京来了一个法国人，带来一种“走在舞台上的衣服”。那是一条红裙子，他们说，几乎要飞起来了。我无法想象那样的红裙子，会飞的红色？会是什么样子？我熟悉的红色，是紫禁城宫墙和红砖楼的红，那时，我想象不出来这个红裙子是什么样，它在我眼前始终是空白的。
许多年以后，我才知道，那位“来自法国的设计师”叫皮尔·卡丹，出生于威尼斯，后来移居法国。1984年，他成为首位踏上中国土地的西方时尚设计师，也在一个小女孩的脑海里，悄悄种下了好奇与幻想的种子。2025年五月，在威尼斯一条狭长的小巷里，我再次与这个名字相遇。
小巷仅够一人通过, 午后的阳光挤了进来，轻风吹来运河潮湿的气息。我停下脚步，仿佛童年记忆中，那条红裙子出现了。童年时那些关于红色的记忆，让我至今依然对红色格外敏感。无论身处何地何时，那些闯入视线的红总会让我不由自主地停下目光。我已不在意是谁呈现了那抹红，穿者的面容有意淡出，图像是模糊的，只留下那一抹红色，在记忆与镜头中的回响。
生命仿佛是一种循环。像风车一样驱动着我，从北京、上海到伦敦，如今定居在西南部的埃克塞特。我在这个循环里缓缓行走，时而停下，寻找那些曾经的痕迹和碎片, 小女孩的好奇，快乐，委屈与恐惧，甚至对死亡的接触和洞察。