Letter from Beijing | The life we ​​brew in Beijing

(Beijing) Jean-François Leclerc does the most original and stereotypical thing as a foreigner in Beijing. He brews funky beers. And he’s an English teacher.

When I told him that at the hotel where I am staying, we are served Tsingtao, he replied: “It’s like Labatt Bleue; we, we do like God in Heaven!, let’s put it. »

A very small operation, barely 25,000 L per year, which he started with a Welsh partner also settled in China. But products that stand out in contests. And who are making a niche for themselves in local palaces. “The Chinese don’t really like bitters, so they make funny faces at their first sip of a double IPA… But that’s a changing market. »

Anyway, out of compassion as much as promotion, he wanted to send me some samples of his beers, which we could have tasted with colleagues in the wee hours while reviewing Nils van der Poel’s times at 10,000 m, in the greatest tradition of international sports journalism. It will not arrive.

“It’s forbidden, the hotel doesn’t allow food to be brought in from outside the Olympic bubble,” I explained to him.

He was amazed.

Because you see, as much as it is almost impossible to enter China, once past the sanitary airlock of the country, life here is normal. I mean: life outside the Olympic bubble, life in the city. People wear the mask, yes (not all, by the way), but the restaurants are open, the grocery stores, the theaters. The image of personnel in full virus protection suits is striking, but this is only a border or outbreak zone reality. I ask him if he knows people who have been infected with COVID-19 for two years in China. He is looking. He doesn’t know any. Ah yes, maybe a friend, who thinks he got it in December 2019… But no more.

What brought him from the Plateau Mont-Royal to the Shunyi district? What made him settle in the northeast of the city, where Beijing is nibbling away at an artisanal farming world? “Yesterday, I met a gentleman with three goats on my way home. »

– Chinese accent music. Language.

There are some for whom it’s the food, others for whom it’s the culture, some fall in love with a local human being… He is the sound. He set foot in China, and his eardrum flipped.

“I come from a family of musicians…”

He was here with a friend, who married a Chinese girl. They had come to spend a few months with his wife’s family, and Jean-François decided to accompany her. The friend and his Chinese wife returned to live in Mont-Saint-Hilaire. Leclerc came to live in China. “I was told that the easiest way to come and work here is to become an English teacher. Except I wasn’t really good at English. I studied English for a year, and got a job in Harbin, northern China. That was 13 years ago.

The nights are long in Harbin, and after a few weeks, he “met” a Beijing girl on the internet. He could see that she was translating their conversation into her broken English, but he could see above all that she had a great sense of humor.

“We chatted for three hours. Afterwards I wrote to a friend and told her: “I just met my wife.” »

He moved to Beijing with her, they got married, they have two children who study in French high school, the oldest, 9 years old, plays hockey and both speak perfect French, Mandarin and English.

He lives in a suburban house, in an urban mix of apartment buildings and bungalows. “It’s a community, with a security guard, you have to warn if a guest is coming, and say which door he’s entering. Not that there’s a lot of crime, but I think Chinese people like to feel safe. »

* * *

“What I like in China? People are curious, it’s easy to get in touch. They are proud too, they want to talk. That, for a guy like me, is gold. There is a lot of support. If you can go to a restaurant, you would almost see battles between people who want to pick up the bill.

“What I liked least was the pollution. But in the past five years, it’s amazing how things have changed. When I arrived there was at least one dangerous smog episode a week. Now it’s once a year. Now, if things go wrong, if things get tough in Hong Kong, in Taiwan, if there’s a war in Ukraine, it may become impossible to continue living here. We will come back to Quebec. »

But today ? Life here is good, and if there is less greenery than in Quebec, Beijing has its parks and its infinite charms.

“We talk a lot about corruption in China, but there is corruption in Canada. And here, when the government decides to fight against corruption by closing 300 factories, to install them further away, it does it! »

The big jump site, where we see cooling chimneys in the background of freestyle skiing figures, is a former steelworks (and not a nuclear power plant). This whole area is a kind of open-air industrial museum frozen in time, which the city is transforming.

“It’s true that they raze neighborhoods to build high-rise buildings, but they compensate, and I personally know people who had shabby homes and became millionaires because of it. It’s more complicated than they say. »

As for surveillance – China is the champion of facial recognition – it exists, but it does not make it a disease.

“I don’t think they’re interested in listening to my phone, but anyway, I don’t care. Officially, the Chinese internet “wall” cuts links to the outside web. “Well, I have a VPN and no one is ringing my doorbell. Must not exaggerate. Yes, there are cameras everywhere. But I’m quite a cowboy in cars, and I can assure you that it doesn’t work out that much. I burn fires, I drive on medians, I hardly ever get tickets. Sometimes yes, and there I say to myself: “OK, this camera, it works.”

“I traveled a lot and I learned one thing: the world is people. People want to be happy, to love, everywhere. And everywhere there are thick. People have a lot of prejudices about China, I realize that when I talk to my friends in Quebec. But the Chinese have a lot of prejudices about Western countries too. One day, the Japanese had done something, I don’t know what, and people started attacking Japanese cars. Even if they belonged to Chinese. Thick ones are everywhere. »

* * *

One fine morning, François Nadeau decided to throw everything away to go and live in Beijing. “I emptied my apartment, I sold everything I had, I was left with two suitcases. »

He has lived in “the Brossard of Beijing”, as he says, for five years and he has never regretted his decision. He is one of 9,944 Canadians registered with the “Canadians Abroad Service” at the Embassy.

Trained in music at Concordia, he has composed the themes for several TV shows and documentaries, in addition to doing web development and post-production. But his passion has always been photography. Also, in 2013, he participated in a Chinese competition for international photographers to promote the Beijing region. He was detained. He visited the country several times. Fell in love with it. And decided to go and make a living there.

“China has always fascinated me, and that’s because of things as silly as Tintin and the Blue Lotus. Here, I feel that I live in a huge ocean with always something to discover. It’s an endless topic to explore. The culture, the people, the history, the food, there is always something fascinating to see. »

At the beginning, he lived with a Quebec friend. Then he lived in a tiny studio rented for $650 a month. Now he lives with his Chinese girlfriend in the suburbs, an hour by bus from Beijing, in the “Brossard of Beijing”.

He tells me about the same local, almost “normal” life, provided you don’t live in an area where the virus has been present. Everyone must have their “green code” on their phone. This is not vaccine proof (nearly 90% of the population would be vaccinated with Chinese vaccines). It is rather a proof of contacts: it indicates if one has been close to infected people or in a contagion zone. Once this code in hand, you can go to the restaurant, the show, the bar, etc. Movement between cities may require permissions, and will be tracked.

“I was at the restaurant yesterday, and it was full,” he told me on Wednesday.

He makes a good living from his photography contracts, despite the competition. “Everything works with guanxi, contacts: if someone trusts you, you can move on. »

“It is a complex country, with a long history, having known for 30 years a hallucinating development, never seen in human history. People still have an image of Chinese people in Mao collars riding bicycles. But the country is becoming the number 1 power, if it hasn’t already, and they are very proud of it. We must not forget that Chinese history over the past century has often been tragic. »

What about police repression? What are we doing to the Uyghurs?

“For the Chinese, it’s none of our business. They are genuinely offended that we meddle in their politics. A Chinese friend did not understand why I followed the American elections. For him, it was none of my business. »

What he loves above all here are the people.

“I have never been put off. People are so nice and curious. You go to a small village, people take you to eat at their place. They allow themselves to be photographed. Well, the soldiers, no, but the soldiers everywhere don’t like that. There’s still this old China, next to a hypermodern China… If you haven’t lived there, you can’t understand. »

I listen to them, and I just feel like jumping the Olympic fence, tasting the city a little…