Beijing
Trip Start
Aug 06, 2007
1
13
20
Trip End
Nov 17, 2007
Beijing, China
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Beijing is China's capital city and boasts over 15Million people as of last count. It is a huge massive city with so many people and buildings but unlike Hong Kong where all the buildings are mashed together into a tiny area to get a beautiful skyline view, Beijing seems so massive in distance and everything is scattered out by great lengths.
I guess I had not really considered what being a 3rd world, communist country means until getting here. Hong Kong and Beijing although both amongst the largest cities in the world and China are worlds apart. English is not understood or used in Beijing the way it is in Hong Kong. However, with the upcoming 2008 Olympics, everyone in the tourism industry seems to be making great attempts to welcome all the English and other foreign speaking tourists and all people were quite hospitable to us
Chairman Mao at Square
.On day one we planned to see Tiananmen Square. We ended up going to the Forbidden City instead. Since this week is a national holiday week in China...you can imagine the crowds. We saw the Temple of Heaven on day 2 and eventually saw the Tiananmen Square on the 4th day. All were really great to see. Very impressive that such monuments and architecture have been restored the way they have so that people like us can glance for a moment back in time to see how the ancient Chinese dynasties lived.
The Great Wall tour was clearly the highlight of Beijing, as I am sure it is for most people. The day we went to the great wall it was super cloudy and smoggy and so it was very hard to get some good shots of the length of the wall unfortunately. Our guide said that when the wall was being built, over 30% of all men in the area were being used to build it, but it was a big secret to the rest of the population. A horrifying aspect that I had never heard before was that she said on a regular basis, if a worker was not putting in his share or was being lazy or got sick, they would not just send him back to his family, but they would bury them alive underneath the wall. A lot of history behind this wall.
In China, it is unlike any other place I have ever been to, even Mexico and Central America which are still considered 3rd world. The condition of the bathrooms in many common areas like the zoo or public transportation and some malls is unmentionable, so I won't mention it. However the one thing I will mention is how people seem to not mind the "squat toilets". I guess it is just what you are used to, but here, no one flinches at the prospect of these open squat toilets that do not have doors to close (ie
Tiananmen Square and soldiers
. you go to the bathroom if front of other people and are supposed to "squat" and to make things even more fun....there is no toilet paper). Privacy is not an issue - people just go. It was the one aspect that I was not terribly keen on. However, I guess it is good preparation for Thailand next week and India and Africa if we go there some day.The other thing we could not get over was how much smog there was. It honestly looked as if there were a bunch of fires all over the city and that was causing all the white/Grey cloudy cast all around the city. I have never seen anything like it. I wonder if people who have lived here their whole lives have ever seen the stars at night. Perhaps we witnessed Beijing at a particularly smoggy time, but it was unreal.
Also smoking...in China it seems that smoking is a national pastime. Everyone smokes here it seems. Nothing is off limits. Bathrooms, restaurants...you name it and people are smoking.
The traffic here is unbelievable too. You have to be very careful walking around. The cars and bikes and rickshaw's just zip by...to hell with any people who may be walking.
Beijing overall had a lot of very interesting historical monuments to see, but is not a place one should go for a "vacation" in the sense of a relaxing, enjoyable time to feel pampered and renewed that is for sure.
