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By Root 1201 0

time, the capital was regarded as a fussy, imperial sort of town full of officious bureaucrats who disdained provincials. This suggested an orderly place. Clearly, this must have been a long time ago. What I saw now as we walked along was mayhem. In the dismal haze, people screamed into their cell phones. Beggars pleaded for money. And everywhere there were crowds, seething masses of people, striding up sidewalks, filling underpasses, crossing roads as speeding cars cleaved them apart. And there was noise, an earthshaking wail of jackhammers and buzz saws and, of course, the ever-present howl of car horns. In China, I’d discovered, when getting into a car, the first thing a driver is expected to do is blast the horn. This is to be repeated in ten-second intervals, and because, by my count, there are now a bazillion cars in Beijing the result is an endless honk, a ceaseless clamor amplified by the ear-rattling grind of construction. Half the city seemed to be going up, while the other half seemed to be coming down. And it was only when I found myself in the presence of a bucket of live scorpions that I was able to tune out the havoc of Beijing. There’s nothing like coming face-to-face with a black scorpion to concentrate the mind.

“You want to try?” Meow Meow asked. “Good for heart.”

We wandered into a crowded alleyway market. There were snakes, grasshoppers, crickets, starfish, and seahorses in buckets and cases strewn about our feet. And the black scorpions. A vendor approached me waving a stick upon which a half-dozen of the live scorpions had been impaled.

“He says it is very tasty,” Meow Meow translated.

But it didn’t look tasty. It looked like a stick squirming with scorpions.

“Do you eat this?” I asked, gesturing at these alleged delicacies.

“No,” she said. “But my grandfather eat one scorpion every year. He eat it for medicine. Sometimes, he eat snake too.”

Perhaps the ingestion of these critters had medicinal value, but as I watched these scorpions meet their end on a hot grill, I concluded that it would take more than that for me to eat one. Some kind of sauce at least. Or seasoning. Perhaps a dry rub. If I was going to swallow a strong dose of venom, it better taste good. And this didn’t look like it tasted too good at all.

We returned to the main streets of Beijing, where I noted the billboards featuring celebrities pimping for Dunhill (Jude Law) and Adidas (David Beckham) and, strangely, PETA (Pamela Anderson), and just as I thought my senses would be overwhelmed, we found ourselves in a blissful park just east of the Forbidden City hidden behind high, red ocher walls. Trees were in bloom. Ornate bridges crossed a babbling brook. The ponds were filled with glimmering goldfish. Decorative buildings graced the pathway. It was a genteel retreat from the havoc raging beyond the walls.

“This nice park,” Meow Meow observed.

In the midst of the serenity, I noticed a large group of middle-aged people lingering. They didn’t seem to know each other, but now and then one couple would approach another to engage in conversation.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“They are here to find husband or wife for their children,” Meow Meow said.

“Pardon?” I thought I had misheard.

“If they have daughter, they come to park to find a husband. Same with son. Come to park to find a wife for him.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“And is this something that only occurs in this park?” I asked.

“No,” Meow Meow said. “This occurs in all parks now. It is very new, only since last winter, but now it is very common.

“Getting married today is very complicated,” she went on. “Because of One Child policy, older people now have only one child. Before, there were more children who could take care of them in old age. Now who their one child marries decides how well they are taken care of when they are older. So there is a lot of pressure. And this,” she said, gesturing toward the middle-aged couples, “is the result.”

I would come to hear about this as the 1-2-4 problem. When one person marries, the couple assumes responsibility for the welfare of