What I Learned in China
Here is a long list of things that I learned during my time in Beijing:
More pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/haleebot2000/sets/72157622568644189/
- It is quite possible to have all sorts of meals that do not contain: turtle heads, mice, chicken feet, monkey brains, or eels. I did eat: duck, beef tendon, fresh water shrimp, and lots of dried banana chips dipped liberally in Nutella.
- They are not joking around about the swine flu. They use infrared to take your temperature as you go through customs at the airport.
- Communism = I couldn't access Facebook.
- Beijing has a Chinatown!?
- Street vendors are very aggressive. And vocal. And they grab at you.
- Oh my gosh, the drivers are insane. The bicyclists are insane. The pedestrians are insane. Every time we got into a cab, it was like NASCAR x bumper cars x Death Race 2000 x Critical Mass. I was certain I was going to die about 4,000 times, yet somehow, miraculously we never crashed into anything or were plowed over. It's so bad apparently, that if you get into an accident, your insurance premiums don't go up because it is totally certain that you WILL get into an accident.
- A lot of the people riding bicycles wear these leather knee coverings...sorta like leg warmers, but made of leather and hiked up so they go from mid-thigh to mid-calf.
- Everybody smokes, and they smoke everywhere. Even in the office, people were smoking out by the elevator and in the stairwells. (Thankfully, no one was smoking at their desks.)
- The currency is the Chinese Yuan (CNY), but everyone there calls it RMB.
- Most of the toilets were the typical Western kind, with a commode. I only encountered one where it was the hole in the ground with the footholds, and I was specifically seeking it out.
- The Forbidden City isn't really forbidden, you can pretty much walk right up to it. I didn't have much time for sightseeing, but I did get up at dawn one day and walked down to the Forbidden Palace and Tian'anmen Square to check it out:
More pictures on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/haleebot2000/sets/72157622568644189/
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