Beijing had always endured.
It endured fire. It endured frost. It endured emperors who ruled it and rebels who burned it, foreign boots that trampled its stones and foreign guns that battered its gates. Time and again, men declared the city broken, yet its walls rose again, its streets filled again, its heart kept beating.
The Forbidden City stood at the center, its red walls soaked with history. Drums once thundered there to announce the emperor's decrees, gongs rang to mark the hours, but the same red walls had blackened with soot when rebels torched them, and the same golden roofs had been pried apart by foreign soldiers hunting for treasure. Still, the vermilion paint returned, the roofs were retiled, and banners of new rulers cracked in the wind above its gates.
Humiliation came like a tide, each wave higher than the last.
In 1900, eight foreign armies marched through the gates, rifles gleaming, horses snorting steam on the summer air. Shops slammed shut, incense smoke from temples curled into the sky, then was drowned by the stink of gunpowder and burning wood. Looters clattered through courtyards, their pockets heavy with jade seals, porcelain bowls, bronze bells. Beijing watched, silent, its stones slick with ash.
In the 1930s, another army came. Japanese boots hammered down Chang'an Avenue in unison, their flags bright against the winter haze. The sound of their marching drowned the temple bells. Families huddled behind shuttered doors, listening as officers barked in a tongue they did not understand. Some whispered curses. Some whispered prayers.
Then came 1949.
On Tiananmen Square, banners of red snapped in the wind. Loudspeakers crackled. Mao Zedong's voice boomed above the crowd: "The Chinese people have stood up." Peasants squinted in the glare of the autumn sun, soldiers raised rifles high, children climbed shoulders to see the man who promised a new world. Sweat dripped from cotton shirts, and dust swirled with the roar of voices. China was reborn, but wary, turning inward, shielding itself from a world still seen as hostile.
Three decades later, another voice echoed, softer yet more dangerous. Deng Xiaoping said the country must be "bold and courageous." His words traveled farther than rifles, farther than tanks. In Anhui, peasants dug in the night, dividing commune land into furtive family plots. The smell of earth rose with their fear. They signed secret contracts with ink made from lamp soot, each stroke a gamble with their lives. In factories, workers dismantled Soviet-style assembly lines and sold their parts for scrap, then rebuilt them for profit. The clatter of sewing machines filled village courtyards; sparks from welding torches danced against brick walls that had never seen such fire.
Beijing transformed.
The bicycle bells that once jingled like swarms of insects gave way to the metallic roar of traffic. The Third Ring Road clogged with cars, horns blaring like trumpets of a new age. Hutongs fell to demolition crews, their walls crumbling in clouds of dust that stuck to the sweat of migrant workers. Those same workers slept six to a room on straw mats, neon light from karaoke bars staining their windows pink. At dawn, they trudged out again, carrying bricks, bending rebar, raising towers of glass higher than any pagoda had dared.
In Zhongguancun, once a warren of radio parts and cassette decks, young men in plastic sandals clutched floppy disks like talismans. They wrote code through the night, slurping instant noodles, chasing dreams of software companies that might one day rival Silicon Valley.
The city pulsed. Dust, sweat, neon, ambition.
Then came July 13, 2001.
In Moscow, an envelope was opened. A pause, a translation, then:
"The 2008 Olympics are awarded to the city of Beijing."
The words shot across satellites, televisions, radios, cell phones. The city froze, inhaled, and then erupted.
In Zhongguancun, programmers shredded paper and flung it from office windows, laughing as it swirled down like summer snow. In the Shougang steel mills, sparks flew from furnaces while workers, faces black with soot, embraced each other and shouted until their voices cracked. In Hebei villages, farmers leaned close to static-filled televisions powered by wheezing generators. An old man wiped tears with a calloused hand and whispered to no one: "We are no longer the sick man of Asia."
On subway trains, strangers wrapped arms around each other, paper flags brushing against sweaty faces. Children made torches of cardboard and waved them, chanting "Zhongguo! Zhongguo!"
And on Tiananmen Square, tens of thousands surged forward. The same plaza where emperors had paraded their power, where Mao had declared the republic, where blood had darkened the stones in 1989, now roared with joy. Flags cracked in the air, voices rolled like thunder, fireworks exploded in red and gold above the Gate of Heavenly Peace. Mao's portrait gazed down, unblinking, as if the dead were watching the living celebrate.
It was triumph. But a triumph laced with unease. WTO membership loomed, the world's gates would swing open, and China would walk into them. But could it stand steady? Could it keep its footing? Beneath the cheers ran a murmur of doubt, too faint to silence, too stubborn to disappear.
Far from Tiananmen's floodlit square, behind the Third Ring Road, the celebration took another shape. A smoky bar stank of cigarettes and spilled baijiu. The floor was sticky with old beer. A television bolted to the wall replayed the announcement on an endless loop, each "Beijing!" greeted with another eruption of cheers. Plastic flags waved above sweaty heads, glasses clashed, toasts spilled across wooden tables.
And in a corner, six men sat together — childhood friends grown into men of the new century. They shouted, laughed, and raised their drinks.
Among them sat Li Ming. Tall, broad-shouldered, his hair cropped short, his eyes restless. He was with them, yet apart.
The city trembled with fireworks.
His silence trembled with something darker.