Beijing: a reflective journey through memory and identity

Sharjah24: “Beijing: The City and the Years” captivates from its opening pages, blending memory and philosophical depth to offer readers an intimate, unprecedented view of Beijing: “A Beijing that breathes through its alley stones, holds history in the silence of its walls, and speaks more through its shadows than its loud landmarks.” Translated into Arabic by Yara Al-Masri and published by Rawaayat, a Kalimat Group imprint, the 520-page book features 44 vivid chapters by Chinese novelist Ning Ken. His prose forms an emotional map that reimagines the city as a living being—one that changes, shapes its people, and quietly preserves their traces, just as time embeds its essence in ancient stone.

A structure like a map

Ning Ken opens with a key to his vision: “The city, in short, is a vessel of time” (p.15), before guiding readers through alleys and courtyards that resemble memory’s chambers. From the 1950s to today, each section stands alone like a photographic snapshot, yet flows into a wider narrative that moves back and forth through time.

A city that shapes its people

At the heart of the book is the narrator’s deep bond with Beijing. Reflecting on his youth, he writes: “Beijing gave me many intangible things; if not blessings, then fate” (p.26). The city emerges as a silent mentor, offering invisible lessons—belonging amid change, and the power to remember even as old streets vanish.

Clarity through fog

Ning Ken expresses unease with modern Beijing’s grand architecture, admitting: “I prefer the Beijing in which I cannot clearly see myself, over those places where I recognise myself at first glance” (p.25). This line captures the book’s core philosophy: one’s self-image becomes clearest when fractured by the city’s shifting mirror.

An archaeology of memory

The book digs deep into Beijing’s past, suggesting that every person has their own “bronze age” at the start and end of memory (p.35)—a primal layer of longing and pain. He recalls dead birds, slow trains, and the city wall that “cast a vast shadow stirred not by wind, but by its own folds.” These images reshape time within the narrative without academic explanation.

The unseen city

The emotional crescendo arrives when Ning Ken echoes Chen Xi Shi: “Truth is invisible, and there is a Beijing in every heart.” Thus, the true city is not just streets and towers, but a personal landscape shaped by those who have touched its stones or breathed its fog. The book reads more like a long poem carved into the city's soul than a conventional memoir.

Invisible details, enduring history

Ning Ken’s language balances reportage and meditation, using precise imagery to elevate the ordinary: bicycles, dim red lamps, and cats in weeds become emblems of history moving through individual bodies. The translation preserves the rhythm of the original and conveys the author's sensitivity to seemingly minor details that hint at sweeping change.

Beijing: The City and the Years ultimately offers a fresh lens through which Arab readers can reflect on their own cities. Each reader may find in Beijing a mirror of their urban fabric, and revisit their questions about memory, modernity, and identity. Free from theoretical impositions, the book powerfully reminds us that true literature reveals great transformations through modest, often unnoticed, stories—stories that, in time, become the most faithful records of history.