AN IDEA BEFORE IT WAS A CITY

In this NYT travel piece, I explore Beijing as a sacred city.

The article is part of a new series “Where I Live” and when I saw the first few appear, I was really excited–what a great idea for a travel column! So I pitched to the editors the idea of writing about Beijing as a holy city, one that still has some sort of similar function today. The result is this piece with many thanks to Adam Dean for great photos and Professor Jeffrey Meyer, whose book “The Dragons of Tiananmen” inspired many of the ideas in it. (Links to all these books and people in the article).