I’ve been in Beijing all week. I have been surprised to find that I really liked it (apart from the smog – OMG). It’s certainly an intriguing place – right in the middle of an extraordinary amount of change. Some random observations in no particular order:
– the hotel changed the carpet in the lifts every day to tell you what day of the week it was – helpful when friends and family are a whole day away.
– Riding a motorcycle with Side Car around the Forbidden City at night – mad! More to come on this…
– why are taxi drivers all such con artists? I might be foreign but I’m not buying the “ there’s lots of traffic and a longer way back”. Just put it on the meter and stop mucking around.
– Wow the air quality is bad. Various organisations such as Greenpeace and the US embassy publish hourly airquality updates.
– Chinese Personal space is not very large – I guess it can’t be. In the underground that makes for some close encounters (eek). It also extends to traffic, with pedestrians, bicycles and cars manouevering at speed between people and cars just inches from each other (scary).
– Beijing has approx 4.5 MILLION cars. Most of them are less than three years old. Most of the drivers have held a licence for less than three years. That’s pretty darn scary if you think about it.
– the weirdest item of clothing I saw was crochet hot pants. Yes. Crochet hot pants.
– The best meal I had was a hot box – a sort of Chinese fondue that’s integrated into the table. The box is filled with water/ stock and spices and once it is boiling you cook thin strips of meat and veg in it. Once that’s done you bung in the noodles and have noodle soup. Great!
– The airport just seems to work. Who’d have thought!It’s now one of the top ten airports in the world – I can believe it. One weird thing however is that they have an extra bag check at the gate for international flights where they take any liquids off you. Annoying if like me you like to buy water for the flight as it’s hard to stay hydrated with the frequency of United glass refills…