DOES ANYONE HERE SPEAK ENGLISH?!?!

(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.

An hour out of the city it felt like a completely different place.

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.