6. The watchful gaze of history

In the early days of this millennium, I graduated university in England and set out for a new life in China. Here, I share the quiet stories of my journey, a chronicle of discovery and displacement, woven into the fabric of a land vast and unfathomable.

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The day feels different - louder, somehow - like the air has thickened in the hours before I leave Beijing. My bags are mostly packed, yet there’s a lingering feeling, a subtle awareness that this will be the last time I walk the streets of the city before I fly south to Guangzhou. The thought nags at me as I set out on my final errand. There's something I need to take with me, a trinket perhaps, a souvenir to remind me of the city, of this strange, in-between place I have only begun to understand.

I decide to visit a market. I have no particular plan, but the guidebook had hinted at a sprawling bazaar somewhere in the north of the city - rows of stalls, clusters of vendors hawking goods from every corner of China’s complex past. There is something about the idea of it that calls to me - a place where the old and new collide, where history is peddled alongside plastic toys, counterfeit watches, and faux silk scarves.

When I arrive, the market is alive with colour and noise. Vendors shout over one another, their voices rising above the chatter of tourists and locals alike. The air is filled with the scent of fried food, the tangle of bodies thick enough that I have to push through the crowds. In one corner, a man offers imitation jade necklaces, while beside him a woman sells bundles of cheap scarves. But I’m not here for the silk or the jewellery. My eye has already been caught by something else - a stall stacked high with kitsch, the kind of mass-produced novelty that looks to be made as much for the tourist as for some hidden hunger for nostalgia.

There it is: a display of wristwatches, all with the same face. A smiling Chairman Mao Zedong, his outstretched hand giving a gentle, ever-constant wave. The image is so thoroughly manufactured, so deeply absurd, that it draws me in despite myself. The face is so vibrant, his eyes so full of the sort of intensity that only propaganda can cultivate. I wonder how many of these Mao watches, with their plastic bodies and jittering movements, have been sold to the thousands of visitors who’ve passed through Beijing in recent years. The watch itself is an ironic reflection of the past - a piece of history reduced to a trinket, a moment frozen in time, but recast for the consumer’s pleasure.

I’m drawn to the stall. The woman behind it is older, her hair neatly done, wearing a floral dress. She studies me, her eyes appraising, as I linger before the watch display.

"You like?" she asks in a thick accent. I nod, examining the watches with the careful curiosity of someone on the cusp of both amusement and fascination.

"How much?" I ask, already knowing that I will have to haggle.

She looks at the display, her gaze briefly flitting to the red-faced Mao on each watch. "Fifty yuan, each," she replies, her tone firm but friendly.

I shake my head, a soft laugh escaping. "Too much," I say, offering her a polite but assertive smile. "How about twenty each?"

Her expression doesn’t shift, though I see the flicker of calculation in her eyes. There’s a brief silence as she weighs my offer. She knows the game as well as I do.

“Forty-five yuan each,” she counters, unflinching.

I look at the watches again, trying to mask my smile, pretending I’m undecided. "Forty-five is too much," I reply. “How about thirty?”

She hums in mock consideration, eyes narrowing just slightly. "Thirty-five," she says at last, and I can see she’s waiting for me to make the next move.

“Thirty,” I insist again. After a long pause, she shrugs, as if relenting to my persistence.

“Three for one hundred,” she says at last, her voice laced with that quiet satisfaction of knowing she’s won part of the bargain. But I can’t help myself; I ask for one more. I offer her a hundred yuan exactly.

She hesitates, clearly surprised, then looks at the pile of watches with a faint trace of something like exasperation. With a deep sigh, she finally agrees. “Four for one hundred yuan,” she says, holding out the plastic bag.

I accept the deal, grateful for the triumph of negotiation, though in truth, the price is a mere fraction of the value of what I’ve just acquired. Four¹ wristwatches, each with Mao Zedong’s unwavering smile, his arm forever raised in a gesture of victory, even as the world around him continues to change. I can’t help but wonder, as I clutch the small bag in my hand, what these watches - these little emblems of nostalgia - mean in the larger context of China’s history.

Each Mao watch is a small replica of something much bigger - a symbol of the Cultural Revolution, the Great Leap Forward, the promises and failures of an era that still looms large in the national consciousness. These watches are so far removed from the political upheaval they reference that it is almost absurd to think of them as anything more than trinkets. And yet, the very fact that they are being sold, that they are still being made and bought, suggests a different kind of historical memory - a sort of market-driven reverence that can twist even the most painful past into something palatable for the masses.

In a way, these watches are not just souvenirs; they are fragments of China’s complex, often contradictory past, packaged for easy consumption. Mao’s image is immortalized here not as a leader, but as a commodity, his waving hand reduced to a perpetual symbol on a timepiece that no longer measures the hours of revolution but rather those of consumerism.

As I leave the market, the watches tucked safely in my bag, I am struck by the peculiar nature of it all. Beijing, and China itself, are constantly in flux, their past and present colliding in ways that seem both inevitable and jarring. As I head back toward my hotel, the watches nestled in my bag, I think about how history is consumed, reshaped, and repackaged. The Mao on my wrist - his image a perfect fusion of reverence and irony - will be a reminder, not just of Beijing, but of the complexities of China’s history, forever caught between nostalgia and progress.

And maybe that’s what the wristwatch is really saying: that in the end, time is an odd thing to measure, especially when the past is forever reaching out from the faces we wear, the objects we buy, and the moments we leave behind.

A Moment of Gratitude

If the words of Ill Grandeur have resonated with you, consider buying me a cup of tea. In China, tea is more than just a drink - it is a symbol of connection, warmth, and reflection. A one-off tea is a way of sharing in the journey, supporting the story, and keeping the spirit of discovery alive. Every cup helps bring the next chapter to life.

1. I’m still not sure why I ended up buying four of the same watch. Perhaps it was skillful upselling from the vendor. Perhaps I was hedging by bets that these mass-produced watches were unlikely to stand the test of time. I can report, two decades on, that two of the four Maos are still waving.