Back on the chopsticks...........

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  Beijing, China
Monday, June 2, 2008

This isn't Chinatown - this is China, and at the last count there were more than a billion of them out there. Welcome to the People's Republic of China (as opposed to the Republic of China, which is just over the water).
I'm writing this in my Beijing hotel, and the next stage of my journey is (supposedly) overland. All my travel and accommodation for the next couple of weeks was booked as part of a tour before I left the UK. For the first time since March I'm just following an itinerary rather than having to think for myself, and it's rather relaxing. I've also got company! Dean and Julie from Adelaide booked the same tour in Australia, and the three of us are together now until Moscow. With a bit of luck, I may even stop talking to myself.
Random stuff:
The Beijing Olympics are only about 7 weeks away now, and large parts of Beijing look like a building site

Mao iconography, Beijing

. The reason that I said supposedly overland earlier is that I should have been traveling from here to Mongolia by train. Because of the Olympics the company couldn't reserve a train ticket in China for any dates in June, and now I have to fly there. To begin with I was a bit miffed, but it's given me an extra day in Beijing and the Chinese/Mongolian border crossing sounds a nightmare. They've probably done me a favour.
Security in China has been tightened up because of the Olympics. The Ministry of Public Security has reported foiling poison gas and bomb attacks, sabotage to food supplies and plots to kidnap athletes and spectators. The place must be absolutely crawling with terrorists! I also read reports that doors were being removed in some public conveniences as a security measure. I checked it out on your behalf, and in at least one place it was true - no toilet doors. The toilets were squat-pads though, and at least 3 of them were occupied by Chinamen. This is not an image that I particularly wanted to be imprinted on my brain, but it's there now and I can't turn back the clock.
China is cheap, incredibly so. A meal in a restaurant over the road from my hotel cost me about 80p, and a large bottle of their rather fine Janying beer is less than 30p a pint - and this is in the centre of Beijing. You can also get free stuff! To promote China tea, there are Government-run Tea Houses where you can go for a little tea ceremony, try out different types of tea and you don't have to pay. Well worth a visit, as they're really nice.
Spitting. The Chinese love a good spit. I knew this before I came, but I was taken aback by the sheer amount of spitting that they do. There's a constant backdrop of hawking and gobbing, and this is a game that the girls play just as well as the boys. Sitting in a restaurant on my first night here, there was lots of spitting going on (indoors), and worryingly it seemed to be coming from the kitchen

Pavillion, Taoran

. I finally tracked it down to the waitresses, who were spitting in the rubbish bin as they walked past. Etiquette here and at home is just different - picking your nose whilst riding a bicycle seems quite acceptable, and farting in public doesn't appear to be a problem. I hope that I haven't misread the last one, because since the Janying beer I've started to join in. 
Crime. The Hong Kong Chinese told me that on the mainland, they would cut my hand off just to steal my watch, which is arrant nonsense. Strange things do happen here though. When I was looking for newspaper articles about the Philippines, I found a report about an argument in a gambling den in China. One guy got very upset and decided to take his revenge. He went home, loaded up his car with explosives, and headed back to the gambling den to blow the place up. Seventeen people were killed, and more than forty injured, when his car crashed into a tractor on the way back there........
Chinese food is absolutely nothing like the stuff you get in the UK. Boiled eggs are boiled eggs again (and not duck embryos), but unless you are in a tourist place there are no English menus, and nobody speaks English. Short of pointing at someone else's food and miming "I'll have that", a picture menu is as good as it gets. Top tip: look at the picture carefully. I didn't, and ended up with a complete frying pan full of squid on my table

It gets steep up here....

. Very tasty, but it would have fed a family.
You're interesting. When Mary and I were in Kyoto we met a couple of English guys who'd just arrived from China, and they said they'd been surreptitiously photographed by Chinese tourists. It's true! For some Chinese, you may be one of the first foreigners they've ever seen, and you're a tourist attraction. I thought I'd noticed it a couple of times, but then some people walked up and asked if they could pose with us for a photograph. Some other people noticed, and we ended up posing with them too - when the third lot asked for a photo, it was definitely time to leave. Later on, a guy darted in front of us with a camera and crouched down as though he was photographing the pavement (yeah right), but of course it was us he was after. In England, I believe this is called an up-skirt shot.....and it's an offence.
Walking. The Chinese are incapable of walking in a straight line. They have no sense of personal space, they dawdle, generally get under your feet, and given the chance will walk five abreast. Equip them with mobile phones and they will walk straight into you while they text (and they never ever apologise). In Beijing the pavements are wide and it's tolerable, but in Hong Kong when the umbrellas come out, you're in mortal danger. If they introduced a Walking Test here (like the DrivingTest), the Chinese would fail. All of them.
This is one of the most interesting countries I've visited, and I'd love to return and explore some more. Becaue I'd been to one or two Chinatowns, Chinese supermarkets and restaurants in my time, I thought I knew a little bit about Chinese culture. I didn't have a clue, and I'll be back.  
  

Next installment:  "The Mongol Hoards". Watch this space..............

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Mao and the Lion, Tiananmen Square	Cruelty to seals, Beijing	Dean, Julie and myself, plus random Chinese	Tiananmen Square
Forbidden City 1	Forbidden City 2	Forbidden City 3	Forbidden Palace 4
Bicycle rickshaws, Beijing	Beijing back-street in the rain 2	Olypic Stadium, Beijing	Great Wall
Great Wall 2	Great Wall 4	Temple of Heaven	Temple of Heaven 2
Temple of Heaven 3	Standing on the 9th stone.	Water pool, Taoran	Games lesson, Taoran
Carved stone, Taoran	Tunnel of love, Beijing	Ground Zero - all Chinese distances start here	View from my room, Beijing
....but will it wash the car?

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