CHINA, NATIONAL, SOCIETY, LIFESTYLE: Behind This ‘Door,’ New Beijing is Waiting for You

By Hou Dong

As usual, Steve Kuhn and his working team are having a spirited get-together in his temporary apartment in central Beijing to discuss their newly-built website. Their heated discussion is mainly in English, with fragments of some Chinese words. A visible flow of enthusiasm and excitement run through their conversation.

They are setting up a new website about Beijing to make the formal black and white image of China in American minds colorful. That is Beijinglives.

Beijinglives is a newly born baby of a multinational team led by Steve Kuhn (Chinese, American, Canadian and hopefully more soon). They want to build the best website available about life in Beijing. Their aim is to have accurate and relatively complete listings of bars, clubs, music, restaurants, art, fashion, community, health, real estate and more, in order to present a vivid picture of China to a global audience. Though it is still a work in progress, it has already attracted nearly 2000 people per day to look through the site.

Beijinglives encourages its audience to participate in the contribution of the website, inviting one and all to put up their thoughts about life in Beijing, for example: their best and worst experiences in Beijing; their thoughts about the city changing; their favorite bars and restaurants and why; their favorite places to live, and why, etc. It also wants to act as a stage for the many amazing talents in this city to showcase their art to the online world.

The website looks promising. More and more features and information bases are going up on the site. It is still in its infancy, with much of the content produced by the staff. But Steve Kuhn said that he and the other editors want to showcase other voices; they hope to have people of many nations and perspectives write for the site.

The energetic and ambitious founder, Steve Kuhn, does live up to his reputation as a can-do person:
- Graduated from Harvard University with degrees in both economics and applied mathematics.
-A vice president and portfolio manager of Goldman Sachs of Wall Street;
-An expert in trading;
-A professor at Peking University
-The founder as well as the teacher of Mortgage Workshop, the aim of which is to furnish the excellent finance students of Peking and Tsinghua University with opportunities to learn about U.S. mortgage-backed securities, a knowledge of which is in great need nowadays in China. It is free with its only aim to enrich students’ skills and knowledge so they can be successful mortgage traders in the future.

Mr. Kuhn's true passions lie in starting http://www.beijinglives.com/ and teaching.

"I started http://www.beijinglives.com/.com because I felt the information available online to an English reading audience about Beijing and China was often nonexistent, biased or difficult to find. I wanted to create a well-designed site that could help English speaking people living in Beijing find out more about their new home," Mr. Kuhn said.

"For example, we have an event calendar with a very complete listing of events for today and every day in the future. It is easy to find out what is going on, where it will occur and how much it will cost," Steve Kuhn explained with his signature enthusiasm. "No other Internet information source about Beijing is as complete or as simple to use."

After an informal get-together with Steve and his staff--that ended up with us hearing this great underground acoustic guitar band from Xianjiang--he has further revealed his intentions and features of his website through E-mail. He believes too many Americans have a very biased and simplistic view of life in China. U.S. images of China are in black in white. He thinks there should be someone to show how colorful life truly is in Beijing.

Mr. Kuhn wants to be able to document the changes happening here every day. If they do their job well, they think people, years from now, will look back at their archives of words and pictures from this period and be amazed at all that had changed. They want to be like a capsule to capture this moment in time.

"I also want to bring Chinese writers' thoughts on events in China and throughout the world to the English speaking audience," Mr. Kuhn continued. "Most Americans read about China through the eyes of a foreign journalist writing news for a home audience. And while there are certainly many fine foreign correspondents doing amazing and important work here, that should not be the only viewpoint heard and understood. I want to bring intelligent and articulate Chinese writers to a Western audience," he said thoughtfully.

When asked about why he came to China, he said with a big smile on his face, "I think China and Beijing might be the most interesting place to be in the entire world right now. Daily, you see changes here that are very large and significant. It is interesting to see this happening in front of your own eyes. So I came to learn about this city, this culture and to study Mandarin." He is really a big fan of Chinese culture.

When he is not working feverishly on the website, you will find him playing Xiangqi, reading, watching DVDs and very soon appearing playing badminton. In his spare time, he is an energetic big man bursting with energy.

He is well educated and knowledgeable, creative and efficient, treats everyone with respect; he is easy-going, and values time, never leaving today's task to tomorrow. More important, he is the kind of person who thrives on ambition and high goals. All in all, he is an amazing person leading a colorful life. He is one who is here to show the whole world a new image of China.

Considering Steve Kuhn and his group’s never-ending toil for what they love, we believe Beijinglives will prosper in the near and far future.