Beijing, China

We have been in China now for 5 days, mostly around the Beijing area. This place is pretty amazing and these Chinese have really got it together. But, before i go on to much about that I should just rewind things a little, back a few days.

So, following our hectic last day in Delhi, we headed to the airport and hopped on our Singapore airlines flight to Singapore. What a super airline, great food, great service and the outfits those beautiful Stewardesses wear are really fantastic. The Stewards uniforms make them look like duds (in their baby blue blazers), especially when seen next to the women's uniforms. From Singapore we flew to Beijing where we have been for the last five days now.

And Beijing? Amazing, not anything like we expected. Very modern, clean, modern urban architecture, super infrastructure, gorgeous park areas, nice new cars on the road, beautiful people who are very well dressed, overall surprisingly Western. We can even say, better overall than most Western world cities. We have been out and about checking out all the usual touristy spots; Tiananmen Square, the Forbiden City (boring!), the markets (exciting!), and of course the Great Wall, which we visited today with our friend Halima, who is living in Beijing with her husband Aleem.

So, the city markets are really super, you can get the most amazing deals on designer clothing, really silly cheap prices, and great quality. The price negotiating in the markets is really fun, especially with the girls that in work some of the shops. They constantly compliment you and touch you while haggling on the price, it is a very friendly and pleasant experience. We have never had any one try and rip us off is such a cute and friendly way as the Chinese girls. They are just so lovely as they try to extract as much cash possible from your pockets. And when it comes to getting a good price you really need to know what to pay or you could get into trouble with paying far too much. Luckily for us we went out with our friend Halima here for a night of shopper training where we were given the low down on the pricing and what to pay. Oh, and the markets, incase you are wondering, are really nice, not the grungy markets you might be thinking of, these are clean multi-story modern shopping centers with lots of small shops.

Right, so there is also the Donhuamen Night Market, a fairly famous Beijing Night food market which is not like anything we have seen before. What makes it so unique is the kinds of things they sell as food. Lots of bugs; cockroaches, centipedes, grasshoppers and so on. Then there are the sea creatures; starfish, sea urchins and sea horses. Then you've got your snakes and scorpions, plus all sorts of other things that crawl. All served grilled on s stick! The crazy thing is that people were really tuckin' into this stuff! We were hungry and did have some food, but played it very safe. We at some vegi stuff, Steff had some corn on the cob and tofu on a stick, i had some Banana battered balls with sugar, oh yes and we also ate some snake. The snake was actually very nice. It had the texture of a very tender piece of octopus and was fried with a chili sauce to give it some zing, good stuff. We were told by an American that the sea urchin was not that great so not to bother with that one, too bad since we really wanted to give that ball of slimy goop a go!! (yeah right!).

Today we had a really neat little trip to an unrestored part of the Great Wall of China. We drove for about 2 1/2 hours and ended up deep in the green hills outside Beijing. We began a hike with no sight of the wall. We climbed and climbed up into the hills and finally ended up on the 2000 year old wall where we began to walk along a few kilometers of its length. Sections of it are remarkably steep, and being an unrestored, non-touristy section, it was a challenge to navigate the crumbing walls and steps. Most people go to the restored sections, but we wanted to see the authentic Great Wall. The Chinese have a knack of over restoring (basically re-build new, no actual restoration!), hence why we sought out an authentic section. The whole area was really pretty with green odd shaped hills and at the end we descended into a small village where we ate a lovely fresh lunch prepared at a home.

So all in all we are both really impressed with what is going on in China, even the environmental stuff. Environmental issues are right at the forefront here and speed at which the government is taking action ( no doubt due in part to international pressure) is impressive. The issues are right at the forefront of awareness and plans are either in effect or taking effect to deal with the problems as swiftly and effectively as possible. We are aware however that all the information we have on this environmental stuff is coming out of the governments propaganda machine, so a grain of salt may be required here.

Well thats about it really. All pretty good except for one minor hiccup. We did fall prey to what we later found out is a well known scam here in Beijing, the tea shop scam. We were befriended by a lovely girl who hung out with us for over an hour or so and then we all ended up in a tea shop trying teas. Of course, silly us didn't ask if we were going to be charged for this tea tasting, they were free samples righ (Western thinking here-free samples are given, but you are expected to buy)? Well no, they are not free samples (as they are in all tea shops that are legit) these were very pricey, but you don't get told that until the end, oh well live and learn. The girl that led us into the tea shop is likely on some sort of commission from the shop to bring people in and rip them off. You know it all goes right back to what i said about the girls in the market. These people have the amazing ability to look you straight in the eyes and be incredibly cute and charming and then basically rob you blind, all the time smiling and actually making you feel good. The Chinese are very good at matters involving taking your money, it's no wonder that in our consumer driven world they are poised as the next world leaders.