The other day I walked out of my apartment and had to step smartly out of the way of a unit of the People's Liberation Army, marching along the footpath with shouldered weapons.
The weapons were spades, however, and their military task, it turned out, was to lay thousands of rolls of grass which had been dumped beside the road overnight.
Within a few hours the PLA soldiers had transformed a rubble-strewn wasteland between the pavement and nearby buildings into the equivalent of a golfcourse fairway. This was the latest development in the frenetic upgrading of the 10km-long drag which bisects the Chinese capital, the central section of which is known as Chang'an Avenue, in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the People's Republic of China on October 1st.
Everything has to be made perfect in the run-up to that day when 300,000 soldiers, athletes, workers and students will parade along the avenue in a great display of patriotism.
Beijing's Communist Party boss, Mr Jia Qingling, has ordered a massive programme of tree-planting and grass-laying, and decreed that there must be no unsightly waste ground or half-finished buildings or potholes, nothing to mar the semblance of socialist perfection, on China's main street.
And now Mr Jia, I'm sorry to say, has turned his attention to cars. Since last week certain types of automobiles have been banned during daylight from entering Chang'an Avenue, to keep traffic flowing smoothly.
These include all hatchback vehicles, including the Wuhan-made Citroen, the Xiali, which is the mainstay of the capital's taxi fleets, and the Beijing-made Jeep Cherokee.
Since, like most correspondents here, I live on the avenue and drive a Jeep Cherokee, I have in effect been banished to the congested side-streets, so naturally I am not too enthusiastic about this latest rule-by-whim from the mayor's office.
It first affected me when I had to obtain a health certificate to get my Chinese driving licence renewed on the first day of the ban. This involved taking a detour along back streets jammed, it seemed, with every single one of Beijing's 1.3 million registered cars, to a designated hospital a few kilometres along Chang'an Avenue, and then visiting four different surgeries to have my arm pumped up for blood pressure, my knees hammered for muscle reaction, my sight tested with colour charts, and my hearing examined with a tuning fork, before going the long way back again.
Since the beginning of the year, in fact, Mr Jia has been making life hard for Beijing motorists. Not only have city officials been putting down trees and grass in places where it was handy to park; on seven streets of Beijing they have planted the first-ever coin-operated parking meters in the Chinese capital.
In a city where coins are rare - the lowest banknote is worth about a penny - meters will pose practical problems for most motorists, though they will be cheap compared with other international cities - no more than 10p for four hours - and may also be activated with electronic cards.
In an idea borrowed from Tokyo, traffic volume will be kept down by a new law under which cars will be sold only to residents holding a permanent parking permit, which will cost the equivalent of £200 to £500. Registration for new cars has become more stringent, requiring an official chop on seven documents from departments located in different parts of the city.
Moreover, the road tax has been replaced with a fuel tax, which has made driving more costly. On top of that, from January 1st all new cars must be equipped with automatic fuel injection and high-quality catalytic converters.
City car dealers have rushed to comply with the regulation, which has sent car prices up and sales down and put some dealers out of business.
Many of the new measures are aimed not at the October 1st celebrations but at easing city-wide congestion and cleaning up the notoriously polluted air in Beijing.
Police have started random checks on cars. Those not in passable condition have their number plates removed, and returned only when the vehicle is certified clean. Special stations have been set up on access roads to the city where incoming cars which fail the tests are turned back.
Police have also acquired a fleet of tow-away vehicles to remove illegally-parked cars, especially those blocking small alleyways.
The good news is that Beijing's small underground railway system is being extended, and by October 1st a new 13km line, which took 10 years to construct, will be opened beneath the central artery, linking the eastern suburbs to the west of the city.
Then I can take the metro and leave the jeep parked when I want to go along Chang'an Avenue - though not on the open space which many of us used.
That has suddenly become a lawn with a line of fir trees, surrounded by a five-foot hedge.
Cars will be sold only to residents holding a parking permit costing £200 to £500
Car dealers rush to comply with regulations sending car prices up