Well, Beijing is a great city. Completely clean, very green-- big parks with exercise equipment for the older folks and kids alike, green boulevards in the 
middle of the streets, trees all over, even in central Beijing-- extremely easy to get around in (Khubalia Khan did a great job laying the original city out), an easy to use subway that I think is even more modern than in Japan, signs in Chinese and English (and my recognition of the Chinese characters -- if not understanding the modern pronunciation) is still
better than the Cyrllic that I picked up in Russia and Mongolia, and taxis are incredibly cheap and totally safe and easy. . . I don't think you can spend more than $5 to get from one side of the central area to the other, and that covers just about all that you would want or need to do in a one week stay. Tourists everywhere-- and, interestingly, mostly Chinese folks come to the big city to see the sites.
Still signs of the old ways-- men sitting around a table playing dominoes or
some sort of Chinese chess, narrow winding alleys that go on forever with all sorts of live scenes going on, kids getting their hair cut at street side barbers under the trees, old markets and fruit stalls, and the like.
I was really looking forward to getting here and having some good food. The borscht of Russia and the always chewey mutton and beef of Mongolia got old fast. My first-ever memory of China, from around 1980, was watching 5 or 6 guys sitting around a table at lunch-time. . . they were some sort of construction workers, and this was their
mid-day meal, and we were in some sort of local joint, pretty much a sloppy diner kind of place. Well, between them they had about 20 dishes of every sort of food on the table and about 12 large bottles of beer! That gave me a clue about eating in China. And it is still that way. . . the only problem? A) I am only one person, and half of any given plate will fill me up, so I usually end up with just a couple of things and leave a lot left over; and, of course B) I don't know how to order. Just about every plain person in every restaraunt is eating way better than me!!!
In one dumpling shop that had a completely new (for me) style of boiled dumpling, with a sort of soup inside that the meat floated around in there was a sign: "If I can but have a dumpling with roe soup from Baxue province I count myself among the nobility!"
And they were damn good!
middle of the streets, trees all over, even in central Beijing-- extremely easy to get around in (Khubalia Khan did a great job laying the original city out), an easy to use subway that I think is even more modern than in Japan, signs in Chinese and English (and my recognition of the Chinese characters -- if not understanding the modern pronunciation) is still
better than the Cyrllic that I picked up in Russia and Mongolia, and taxis are incredibly cheap and totally safe and easy. . . I don't think you can spend more than $5 to get from one side of the central area to the other, and that covers just about all that you would want or need to do in a one week stay. Tourists everywhere-- and, interestingly, mostly Chinese folks come to the big city to see the sites.Still signs of the old ways-- men sitting around a table playing dominoes or
some sort of Chinese chess, narrow winding alleys that go on forever with all sorts of live scenes going on, kids getting their hair cut at street side barbers under the trees, old markets and fruit stalls, and the like.I was really looking forward to getting here and having some good food. The borscht of Russia and the always chewey mutton and beef of Mongolia got old fast. My first-ever memory of China, from around 1980, was watching 5 or 6 guys sitting around a table at lunch-time. . . they were some sort of construction workers, and this was their
mid-day meal, and we were in some sort of local joint, pretty much a sloppy diner kind of place. Well, between them they had about 20 dishes of every sort of food on the table and about 12 large bottles of beer! That gave me a clue about eating in China. And it is still that way. . . the only problem? A) I am only one person, and half of any given plate will fill me up, so I usually end up with just a couple of things and leave a lot left over; and, of course B) I don't know how to order. Just about every plain person in every restaraunt is eating way better than me!!!In one dumpling shop that had a completely new (for me) style of boiled dumpling, with a sort of soup inside that the meat floated around in there was a sign: "If I can but have a dumpling with roe soup from Baxue province I count myself among the nobility!"
And they were damn good!
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