Běijīng Auto Museum 北京汽车博物馆
南四环西路
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s coverage of Běijīng Suburbs and Beyond
Opened in 2011, this strikingly modern museum is a giant advertisement for the industry rather than simply an exhibition space full of assorted vehicles, although there are more than 70 here among other automotive displays of all kinds, electronic trickery, car-themed restaurants, and other entertainment, spread thinly over five floors.
The wind-swept plaza outside is popular with kite flyers, and the ticket office, rather confusingly, is in railway carriages attached to two miniature steam engines on the north side of the building.
There’s good English labelling throughout the museum, some of it unusually frank. The Phoenix Sedan of 1958 is openly admitted to be a copy of the 1956 Benz 22S, for instance. Manufactured, astonishingly, until 1991, it reached total sales of merely 80,000, which tells you much about the state of China’s economic development for most of the 20th century. It sits in a row of ancient vehicles with massive metal grilles that manage to look both shark-like and staid at the same time, including a more famous Red Flag CA770 with three rows of seats, manufactured from 1965 to 1998. Those who visited Běijīng in the late ’70s or ’80s will remember how few cars there were on the streets, and yet how the taste of incompletely burned petrol was constantly on the tongue.
Examples of early Soviet-built vehicles are a reminder of the influence of ‘older brother’ in the first decade of the People’s Republic. Many cars from this period have an entirely appropriate gangster-ish look to them.
There are assorted vehicles on successive floors, including mock-ups of early models, and speculation on the cars of the future. Videos play on every wall, sound comes at you from all directions, and it’s not a place for quiet contemplation.
There’s a wind tunnel in which to sit and pretend you’re driving, a car exploded into 20,000 individual parts, and a restaurant called Jiā Jiā Yóu (加油, literally ‘add fuel’, meaning ‘step on it’, but used as a general cry of encouragement, e.g. to a sports team). It has traffic lights and a petrol pump outside, is hung with photographs of cars, street signs, and parking meters and has a menu with everything from pizza to foie gras.
A display on the history of design and production quotes Henry Ford approvingly: ‘Henry Ford once said proudly that the assembly line makes it possible to have the spare parts walk towards you, instead of you coming over to them. A car can be assembled so long as a worker sits by the conveyor belt and does the same and simple action repeatedly. As the result, all the redundant and ineffective labour was discarded. In the meantime production increased exponentially. Furthermore operation of this kind does not call for complicated skills and strength. Even a handicapped person can secure the job. In 1915 the automotive output of Ford Corporation alone accounted for 70% of all cars produced in the United States.’
The alienation of the worker from his labour, much criticised by Marx, is now praised; the idea of ‘from each according to his ability’ banished; and the making of workers redundant seen as a worthy goal. If any further evidence was needed that Marx is just a slogan in China, here it is.
But it is a very shiny museum to consumerism.
▶ Běijīng Qìchē Bówùguǎn, South Fourth Ring Road West 126, t 6375 6666, www.automuseum.org.cn, 9am–4pm, Tue–Sun. ¥30. m Kēyí Lù (Line 9, exit D). Walk S and take footbridge over 3rd Ring. b to 怡海花园南门: 临3, 特9内环, 特9外环, 运通115, 740内环, 740外环.
Possibly of more interest but harder to reach would be the privately owned Vintage Car Museum (老爷车博物馆) out in Huáiróu District (t 6167 7039 for directions), to be included in a subsequent edition. See www.laoyeche.org. Enthusiasts get their cars souped up and loaded with accessories, and take their exotics (China is now the largest market for many of the most outré high-performance cars) for custom paint jobs at a district known as Tuner Street (酷车小镇, Kùchē Xiǎozhèn, ‘extreme car town’). Others go to gawp at the models parked in around 50 assorted car-related businesses. The main street is Jīn Chán Xī Lù (金蝉西路), parallel to and east of the East Fourth Ring Road South.
Previously: Yuán Dynasty Capital City Wall Site Park
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
