People’s Republic of Mac: Know your Mac Beijing

Posted by David Feng Sep 7, 2005 at 2:23am

“Know yourself. Know your adversary. And win a hundred battles.”

This is what Sun Zi wrote thousands of years ago in his The Art of War. This stuff is all from ancient China—back then, Beijing wasn’t even the national capital. And yet, much of all this still holds true.

Everybody in the world seems to be really enthusiastic about China. As the president of the Beijing Macintosh User Group, I can say that I’ve seen interest in the Mac and China rise to a level I would have never expected to. It’s with honor, therefore, that I accept my post at Macsimum News. This column—the “People’s Republic of Mac” (“stolen” from a Wired interview about the BeiMac group back in 2004)—will hopefully do its part in filling the faithful readership at Macsimum News in on Macintosh development in a nation where just the mainland alone is home to 1.3 billion registered citizens.

OK—on with the show.

The map business is one of the worst businesses to be in right now in the Chinese capital, if you ask me. Nearly every month, some new road opens, so all maps wind up being history the moment they roll off the printing presses. There are two freeways that are expected to open by the end of the year, and Beijing’s total number of freeways is expected to explode to 15, up from the current 9. By the year 2008, Subway Lines 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 13 will exist, and four additional lines which do not even have a number will crop up.

Knowing that this is an exercise in futility, I nevertheless present you my version (incomplete as it may be) of the all-exclusive Beijing Macintosh map. I assume that all of you know that Tian’anmen is smack in the middle of the city.

Socrates once said that one only learns by actually doing the thing. That thing, of course, is drawing the Beijing Macintosh map by yourself. Don’t panic—it’s easier than poking around in the Terminal or remembering those complex fsck commands at the command line. I’ll guide you through all this.

Get a piece of paper. Grab a pen.

Draw an upward-pointing arrow and label that north.

Draw a big, bold, red star. That’s Tian’anmen. Underneath that, draw a horizontal line. (The center of the line must be underneath the big star.) That’s Chang’an Avenue.

Around the star, draw five concentric rings. Make sure that the middle of these rings (on the X-axis) are on Chang’an Avenue. Those are the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th ring roads. (And still we have those awful traffic jams.) The 2nd ring road runs closest to Tian’anmen; the 6th ring road is
furthest away from downtown Beijing.

Now draw two dots on the central line (to the right of the star). Draw the first one between the star and the first circle (the eastern stretch of the 2nd ring road). This is the AppleCenter at Oriental Plaza. Now draw a second dot between the eastern 2nd ring road (first circle) and the
eastern 3rd ring road (second circle). This is Apple China (at Xinhua Baoxian Tower).

Now draw a horizontal line just north of Apple China (connect the eastern 2nd and 3rd ring roads). This is Chaoyangmen Outer Street. Mark four dots on the road between the two ring roads—these are (from left to right), respectively, Full Link Plaza, Wonderful Plaza, Bainaohui and Landao Towers. Apple used to have an office at Full Link Plaza; they occupied half of the 17th floor, with Coca-Cola grabbing the other half. (Apple’s new offices occupy the whole 9th floor of Xinhua Baoxian Tower.) Wonderful Plaza has an AppleCenter, while Bainaohui has an Apple Experience Center. Landao Towers used to be the only AppleCenter in town for a short, unhappy period from early 2002 to mid-October 2002.

Finally, look at this patch of land between the northwestern 3rd ring road and the northwestern 4th ring road. Draw a diagonal line. This is the Zhongguancun area, the place which started it all—computers first started popping up in this area around the time I was born (two decades or so ago).

Send me your attempts at the Beijing Macintosh map contest to david@beimac.com (scanned or done in AppleWorks, Pages, OmniGraffle, Photoshop or whatever app), and I’ll pick the winning entry and compare it with my master key. Remember those areas—Chang’an Avenue, the ring roads, Chaoyangmen Outer Street and Zhongguancun—as we’ll come across them very often in this column.

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