Her son works in construction and keeps offering to move her out of Dazhalan and into one of the new, boxy apartment buildings along the city's perimeter. But Jiang can't imagine leaving.
"Here, all of my neighbors, I know them all," she says. "In the tall buildings, the people come from all over China. They do not know each other. This is my life here. I cannot leave it. I do not understand why anyone would leave."
Slowly, people in Beijing are learning a new way of life, largely through trial and error.
Automobiles have replaced bicycles at an extraordinary rate (more than 1,000 new cars appear on Beijing's roads every day). The locals dine at American food chains. They shop at Wal-Mart. There was even briefly a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, until a backlash from locals prompted a change to a national tea chain.
On a map, the city is framed by a series of concentric circles. Second Ring Road roughly represents the ancient city limits. Since 1994, the city has rapidly built out more ring roads from there, and planners are talking about a Seventh Ring Road. Out near Fourth Ring Road is Jenny's, a neighborhood grocery that serves Beijing's growing suburbia. Forty years ago, during Mao's Cultural Revolution, this was an agricultural wasteland where many were sent for "re-education."
Today, though, Jenny's is a popular outpost for both traditional Chinese foods and Western goods - from Campbell's to Kellogg's.
John Zhang is the manager. He came here in 1999 when the area, he says, was "like a desert." In less than a decade, Jenny's has grown from a single cart on the side of the road to five full stores.
Zhang and most other employees are actually from Henan province, a 12-hour train ride away. Living conditions in Beijing are hardly ideal - they all live in a dormitory behind the store - but they come because the money is so much better in Beijing, about 2 1/2 times more than what they would earn back home.
"This is where everyone wants to be," Zhang says. "Things have changed so much since I've been here. And it will change so much more."
Matt Murray, a Baltimore native who lives in Beijing's suburbs, is a regular shopper at Jenny's. Finding his home in a subdivision of expatriates first requires driving past developments with names such as Yosemite, Napa and Irvine.
As their names suggest, there is little about the area that resonates as distinctly Chinese. A Home Depot and a Sizzler aren't far away.
