CHINA - The Great Unknown

While the watch world waits to see what happens to the future of watchmaking thanks to recent acquisitions by Chinese companies and the influence of Chinese taste in luxury, La Montre Hermès takes the initiative and sends a group of watch journalists to Beijing.

WORLDTEMPUS - 3 November 2011

Elizabeth Doerr 

Chronicle

I probably shouldn’t admit this out loud, but I had never been to China before. Not even so much as a foray to Hong Kong. The opportunity simply had not presented itself before last month. It seems strange for an ex-pat living on another continent, but my collected knowledge of China up to this trip had come from reading, taking a few language classes with my kids, talking to others I know who had been there, and visiting Chinatowns in the U.S. like those found in New York and San Francisco.

Not being particularly well-versed in the subject of sinology, I therefore had imagined the whole country to be more or less like what you find in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. Man, was I in for a surprise when I got to Beijing.

The Great Wall is a beautiful work of architectural art, yet I could not necessarily tell which of the auxiliary buildings were originally there and which were put there recently for the tourists. © Worldtempus / Elizabeth Doerr

Suspended in time

Thanks to La Montre Hermès, I – along with a number of other industry media representatives – was afforded a brief glimpse of this mystifying land. While 48 hours is too short to do more than make an impression, I was at least able to gather one.

What hit me first was the beautiful airport I landed at. I surmise the 2008 Olympic Games left their mark on this city and important infrastructural buildings like the airport: it is on par with – and in many cases even better than – any major example of the Western world. This impression was quickly crossed by the amusing ride to our hotel near the Great Wall in a bus that I never thought would achieve the fifty-kilometer drive. Paradox at its best.

The Hermès trip was designed to take the participants out of their own “time” and practically suspend it for them – and the illusion worked, at least for me. I felt a little lost in time and space, with the only familiarity being the dear colleagues accompanying me on the journey, as they have on so many others.

Seen on a street in Beijing, I couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be eastern or western: somehow familiar, yet decidedly not. © Worldtempus / Elizabeth Doerr

Big city

I cannot profess to have seen all of Beijing with its 6,487 square miles and population of close to 20 million people. In fact, in the one day I spent in the city proper, I mainly saw the snazzy upscale part of town we stayed in and traffic – lots of that. To me, the area of Beijing I had the pleasure of staying overnight in almost looked like any other upscale quarter of any other city of world renown. The chains, boutiques and goods for sale there were the same as anywhere else in the world. As a matter of fact, having sat down in the lobby of the Peninsula Hotel for a drink with some friends on the trip, I was overcome by a feeling of surreal familiarity. Was I really sitting here in Beijing conversing in a mélange of English, French and German about the same subjects I talk about on many of my trips (watchmaking, of course) while staring at Hermès and Dior boutiques? Somehow, it just didn’t all match up.

And, this, I have decided, is the conundrum that is China – or at least the little bit of it that I was fortunate enough to see. It shouldn’t necessarily want to match up in my mind’s eye, but somehow it does: luxury has now somehow become about familiarity. I was somewhat stunned to find that I can buy exactly the same products in this Asian metropolis halfway around the world that I can in the U.S. state I grew up in or the southwestern corner of Germany in which I now live. I suppose I had somehow expected things to be “different” – after all, isn’t that part of the fun of traveling? I know I like to shop in some of the various places I travel to because the gifts and things I can buy there are not the same as those I can acquire at home. This, however, does not seem to be so in the luxury world.

A McDonalds chain restaurant in Beijing. © Worldtempus / Elizabeth Doerr

Paradox 

Following reports of the last three years, the Chinese buyer of fine watches has very particular taste rooted in what we would call “traditional” watchmaking: fine, fairly thin, definitely elegant, “classic” timepieces of “classic” proportions. 

Apparently, this tasteful recipe only applies to luxury products. The streets of Beijing comprised a paradox of obvious taste directions somehow seeming to contradict the original and traditional. It was hard to tell apart the new from the old in terms of architecture and surroundings. A visit to the Smoke Bag Slanted Street market left me wondering why this was a tourist destination. Were its buildings old, traditional, or rebuilt? I couldn’t tell. Asking an official guide didn’t clarify it much for me, either. “The government invests much in the upkeep of this area as a tourist destination,” was the pat reply I received. 

Somehow, this gargantuan city did not convey a sense of pride in traditions to me. This may well have been due to the places we visited. I guess what I simply missed there was a respect for one’s own traditions and a sense of originality. Most probably it remains that the East and West still have a lot to learn about each other. I know I have a lot to learn about this part of the world, and when I do, surely I will understand some of these aspects better.

As for La Montre Hermès, I cannot thank this company enough for the opportunity to learn more about this intense city. Its Time Suspended model is a prime example of what originality in luxury can be. Now back from my “suspended” adventure, time and place seem to have taken on entirely new shades of meaning…