Hong Kong post # 1 - Booming Beijing

On into China ... We stopped at the great wall (there it is there up behind the train) to attach more locomotives for braking puposes becauses it was downhill to Beijing. 2 English lads, Steve and Jazz spent a lot of time in our cabin - presumably for the girls not us!
As you can see, I was surprised and impressed by the metro system in Beijing, as all signs were in Chinese and English. Even the buses has announcements in english and conductresses spoke a little too - all preparation for the olympics, I suppose, fair play to them. Once or twice we asked directions from people in the street and the majority were able to communicate with us quite well - once they got over my pathetic attempts to try and use the tones in mandarin and realised that Agnes was not Chinese. Actually, that worked against and for us sometimes throughout our trip in China, as people left us alone and thought that she was my guide or chinese wife. Other times I would ask something in english, they would say something to Agnes in mandarin, she would say "English!" and they would look confused, probably think it was a funny dialect from the North/south and repeat the sentence in louder chinese; this did not make my other half happy at all and I would often have to physically remove her from the local to avoid further confrontation.

Impressions of Beijing in early autumn .....

- very hot and muggy after the fresh August in Mongolia.
- very cheap to eat in canteen style restaurants and shopping centres e.g. Chicken curry 1.50!
- big, bustling, happening place with lots of construction, money and fancy cars - definitely feels like the capital of China, although we didn't make Shanghai in the end for a comparision.
- polluted air (never had a clear sunny day, always hazy) and now threatened with the encroaching sands of the Gobi desert. To this extent the government has another mega-project to creat a green belt of trees to protect the capital. Cost .... $6 billion. No shortage of cash here!
- strange sights in the street like people doing aerobics, dancing and everywhere reading the newspapers in glass display cases.
- great names for the bars in the Sanlitun area - Happy Day, Sunshine, Easy Day and my favourite ... The Pure Girl Bar.



Visited Tian'anmen Sq (Gate of Heavenly Peace) which is really huge (40 hectares whatever that is), but too much so to have any atmosphere. It was also in the afternoon and just roasting, so we grouchily drank water in the shade of the trees to one side and looked out of the hundreds of chinese tourists miling about with their umbrelas wondering how they could stick the heat. Still funny seeing people going around (mostly women, having white skin here is considered attractive) everywhere here with umbrellas and not a cloud in the sky - I suppose that's the idea. Mao's body is on display in the square, but we gave it a skip after the Lenin non-starter.

To the north of the square is the Forbidden City where the emperors used to hold up with there family, eunuchs and thousands of concubines - busy men, I imagine. Big, impressive and half of it under renovation (they don't tell you that when you buy the ticket) . The non-renovated parts have grass growing out of the tiles and look faded whereas the renovated looks too new - I'm a fussy tourist!