(Anya)
1 Cleanliness.
Beijing
is an amazingly clean city, for all the people who are there you would think
that the place would have trashcans overflowing or something. BUT NO there
aren’t even leaves on the ground! When you’re walking down the street or in any
public area every five minutes you run into a person with a reflective vest a
broom and a little metal rectangular trashcan. And their job is to keep the
place clean and they do an amazing job at it. This was one of the things that
left me most impressed about Beijing. It provided countless jobs and makes they
city look that much better. In Burlington a city that I would consider fairly
clean looks like a can redemption center next to Beijing.
2 Tourist
oriented spots.
Right before you go into the forbidden city, right before you
climb up on the great wall, you find people peddling great little products that
are the same at every location, apparently novelty hats like a panda with ears
or the angry birds are a huge hit and you can get them ANYWHERE and they must
make a killing on unprepared tourist on a cold day.
For example,. at Summer Palace
on the Seventeen Arch Bridge going to the Nanhu Island there must have been 4 people all selling the same hats.
3 Transit
efficiency.
With a population of 19,612,368 you have to have an efficient method of getting
people where they need to go. And in Beijing they do an amazing job. The
drivers may seem absolutely bonkers but are efficient. In the states a honk is
more of a way to curse at the other drivers in Beijing it’s an effective means
of communication like “on your left” “I’m coming up behind you”. We only saw
ONE accident and it was on the way to the airport. The new subway system that
was installed for the Olympics in 2008 puts NY to shame.
It’s clean, its color
coated and the most waiting you have to do is to get on the escalator. Not to
mention the street separating Forbidden City and Tiananmen is the biggest
street I’ve ever seen, on Google maps just counted about 13 designated lanes
with a 2-lane wide bike lane on each side. After experiencing a Beijing taxi I
am convinced lanes are more guidelines than definitive lanes.
4 Architecture.
In
the city you have a delightful mix of old meets new. There are the skyscrapers
and malls but you still have the classic tile roofing like the view from the
hotel room (0245) Absolutely stunning. The Corbels (the really fancy painted
rafters) were some of my favorite things in Beijing. They usually painted blue
green and gold at the Forbidden City and Summer Palace.
(Colin)
The pagodas were absolutely amazing with the Corbels and the concave tiled roof style is like nothing you see in the US. 
(Mel)
5 Americans in
China.
I expected the
city to be a constant hustle and people wouldn’t even pay any attention to us.
I was dead wrong. As soon as I stepped onto the subway leaving the airport I
couldn’t look around the train without catching awkward eye contact with people
constant staring at me. The day at the Forbidden City I will never forget just
how many people wanted to take pictures of me or with me. I counted about 7
people taking pictures of me before we even entered. And once we were in I was
approached multiple times while taking pictures and in broken English they
would say “picture?” and point to themselves then back to me. I would respond
with a smile and make them take on with my camera as well.
6 Military
presence.
Standing in the center of Tiananmen Square, you can see some light
posts and on those lights post are about 15 cameras on EACH post. Look around
again you see a handful of posted military guards in uniform and about every 10
minutes a mini platoon of the same uniforms will march in sync right by you.
The Police are in black the military in
green, neither of which are armed. Never have I seen so much authority in one
place in my life, I was expecting there to be military presence being the
centralized government it is but I didn’t expect to see Military presence just
walking down the sidewalk.
(Mel and Colin)
7 City Vs Country.
About 64% of the Chinese live in rural
areas in a life style much different to those in Beijing. In the city there are
countless BMW, Mercedes and Audis everywhere. We only got a taste of outside of
the city when we went on our great wall ventures driving through the countryside
and on our hike the seasonal home for a corn farmer was completely different to
what we saw in the city.
Basically all the money is in the city.
The people in the country live day to day off the land.
8 Haggling.
Never before had I haggled, I thought to myself before going “Oh, it will be
easy!” Wrong again. Or at least for me it was difficult Jen seemed to have no
problem whittling away at merchants. I got all giddy when I saved 10 Mao’s. The
merchants were relentless and always caught me of guard and I knew they smelled
American from a mile away. I had one success on the last day of Beijing, when
the Taxi driver took Skyler, Tyler and myself to the silk market instead of the
Tibetan restaurant we made the most of the mishap. I got a sweet jacket that was
originally priced at 3,650 Mao’s for 700! YES. I now know you got to be
assertive and know what you’re doing if you want the price to be right. Even in
our main man Ma Wei Chow’s store the prices weren’t solid. The first time we
came in we paid twice as much for any given item than we did after building a
relationship with him.
(Tyler & Ma Wei Chow)
9 The Food.
Hands down some of the best food I’ve had in my life was during this trip. I was
planning on having the best General Tsao’s chicken ever. I didn’t see general
Tsao’s chicken ONCE. The only plate that had a recognizable name was Kung Pao
Chicken, but even then it was almost a completely different dish than in the
states. One of my goals was to eat some of the weirdest stuff I could.The Dong Hua Men night market catered to my exotic culinary desires I had,
in order: Bullfrog, lamb kidney, lamb head, Snake, mystery meat on a stick,
Cat, Dog, Duck head, duck kidney, Starfish, Sea Urchin, bird’s nest, Centipede,
sheep’s penis and more snake. I didn’t expect it too taste good though! With an
exception to the sheep kidney, centipede and sheep shlong, those were horrible. Chinese food in America is now forever ruined for me, but if i could get a bullfrog stir fry from China Express I would give it a shot.
(photo courtesy of Rob Williams)
Some of my
favorite food from the trip came from un suspecting places such as street
vendors.
(I bet your thinking about how much you want one of these dumplings right now. (Ryan, Jen, Colin and Skylar))
10 old school
yet modern.
Rickshaws being passed by BMW M5s. A Canon retailer right next to a
sculpture store. I kept getting the feeling of tradition everywhere. The
architecture, the culture, the art its everywhere in such a modern city. You
have amazing modern buildings right down the road skyscrapers just down the
road.
For example this building blew my mind when I saw it (it was
fully completed)
Extra pictures
(Williams, Mel, Katrina, Tyler, Jen)
(Sheetz)
(Tyler, Colin, Ryan,Jen)
(Katrina, Cathrine, Mel, Williams)
(Sheetz)
