ABSTRACT
The dark image of Beijing portrayed by the above quote from Cai Weijun provides a
stark contrast with the image of the city carefully constructed by the city government
throughout the 1990s. It suggests a clear disjunction between the potemkin city as it
is imagined by city marketers and the ‘behind the scenes’ city as it is experienced on
an everyday basis by its residents. This fi nal chapter seeks to explore this contested
image of the city by shedding light on the many ways in which the people of Beijing
have resisted efforts to reinvent their city for political gain and marketing purposes.
It demonstrates how the hardship caused by urban renewal, city beautifi cation, and
commercial redevelopment did not go unchallenged by the Beijing population.
