Beijing is the word on everyone’s lips and it’s not all good, right now, but whatever the opinions, there’s no disputing that it is one of the key global cities of the future. There is so much of interest going on.

Visitors to Beijing are privileged to experience a developing society: as one Western entrepreneur working in China observed; “I can’t imagine doing what I am doing now (opening three restaurants simultaneously) in any other place in the world or at any other time.”

There’s a sense of pervading excitement and unfolding plans that one imagines existed in colonial days – in establishing Western civilization in outposts of the known world… Shanghai in the 1930’s… India under the Raj…

That coupled with the age-old mystical attraction of the East – the Orient, the ancient Chinese culture, which has influenced so much of the 21st Century world:
French cuisine, for instance, which originated in China.

Philosophising aside, Beijing is beguiling … and addictive…. I didn’t want to leave on my last trip a couple of weeks ago. “This is about to open and I haven’t seen that”… It took me a while to feel my way into the Imperial City. It is built on a far grander scale than Shanghai and harder to get around. Now, on every trip, I discover more hidden corners.

With the ambitious building program prior to the Olympics, there’s bound to be so flack – some hotels or restaurants that don’t work, or have over-extended. The fascination now will be the Beijing of the post-Olympics. Many of the planned restaurants such as the Beijing establishment of Michele Garnaut of M on the Fringe, Hong Kong and M on the Bund, Shanghai, wisely made the decision months ago to wait until after the Olympics to open. Now she has been joined by many others who didn’t make it in time, held up by building plans and other complications.

I can’t wait to see the Beijing of 6 months time – or a year. Chinese American attorney Handel Lee’s redevelopment of the Legation Quarter in the former U.S Embassy to the Qing Dynasty will be completed and the redevelopment of the historic Foreign Legation Street it is on, complete with trolley buses – Qianmen, known as “Heaven’s Passage” during Imperial Times. The CCTV “Trousers” building will presumably be finished, “The Egg” - National Centre for the Performing Arts and “Bird’s Nest” Olympic Stadium will be settled in and many more.

Come to think of it, don’t think I can wait till then – excuse me while I book my flight…I really need another exquisite dinner at Maison Boulud and duck dinner at Duck de Chine in The Hidden City….and all those other places that haven’t opened yet …