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We are at the 798. It's an old factory. You know, it's quite [an] arts area now in Beijing. And it's a...

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It's become a cultural hub, I guess, would you say?

3
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Yeah, yeah. You can. Yeah, I would say that. 

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China is... you know they closed it so [for such a] long time, so when the doors opened in [the] late '70s, 

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young people is [were] very hungry about the music, about the culture, about everything for... to the Western world. 

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Hi, can I introduce UCCA first? It's a gallery. 

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Beijing, it's so hard, it's so strong, so you have to... you have a lot of things you want to say, want to fight, want to... [go] against. 

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So that's why, I mean as a musician or artist, staying in Beijing, maybe it's good, it's a good choice. 

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This freeway goes from Beijing; it's actually called the Beijing-Tibet freeway. 

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So, if you follow this road, you could eventually get to Lhasa. 

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We're gonna drive past a few famous stretches of [the] Great Wall. 

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The most famous one is probably the Badaling, which is the piece of [the] Great Wall where Richard Nixon had his photo taken, Obama, and there are millions of people there. 

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So, we're gonna go past that to a piece of wall that's actually connected to Badaling, but it's untouristed, and unrestored. 

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[Since] 2007, you know, we go out to the countryside every weekend to find new places to walk in the mountains and came down here and just...

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he had a sign in Chinese saying "nang gai yang," which means kind of "peasant family restaurant." 

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And [we] came in here and they made the most delicious food, 

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and so we kept on coming back and it's just really, really simple country cooking -- nothing fancy. 

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There's no MSG or no fancy spices or anything. It's really just the simple taste of good produce.

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My name is Dominic Johnson-Hill. I've been in Beijing now for nearly 19 years. 

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I came here as a backpacker in 1992-93. What kept me here was opportunity. 

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And then after I learned the language and got to know the people, that was what really made me stay.  

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We're gonna go right now to the underground city, to the nuclear tunnels. It's only a stone's throw really, actually, from my shop. 

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But it's the sort of place that you wouldn't notice. If you walked past it, you'd never think it was an entrance into an underground city. 

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Here we are -- entrance to the nuclear tunnels -- secret entrance. You can see how thick the door is here, which is actually lined with lead. 

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The people that live here above the tunnel actually have set up their kitchen down here. 

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So, you can imagine the crazy life that they lead living above nuclear tunnels and using parts of the tunnel for part of their lives. 

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I mean, we've got a kitchen and there's even a bathroom further on down which they use.

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We're literally in the middle of 20 million people, and being in the hutongs makes you feel like you're in a small community in the countryside. 

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You can see the stars at night. The people are amazing. You hear children laughing and playing in the alleyways. 

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If bizarre wasn't such a negative word, I would say it's bizarre. But it's just so refreshing. 

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Beijing's just a fascinating place. It's just culture and history everywhere, so I feel very privileged to live here, really, and get to live amongst all this.