Beijing

I was a bit weary of Beijing : the pollution, the crowds, the traffic...but I was actually happily surprised. The pollution is there, it appears as a thick smog, just as if a cloud had swallowed the city. They are hoping to make Beijing "green" for the Olympics next year, but hey have got their work cut out... The city isn't as crowded as i would have thought. You can easily walk along the pavement and the underground is manageable, even during rush hour. As for the traffic, it is present, there are many cars, buses and cycles (pushbikes, motorcycles with two or three wheels..) all trying to take priority on each other. The traffic lights don't really work for pedestrians and bikes, because even when it is green for pedestrians to cross the road, cars can still turn into the road they are crossing. It is worse for bikes : a large lane is reserved for them on the side nearer to the curb, but if they are going straight on at a juction and a car decides to turn right, they get there route cut by the turning car. It leads to a lot of bibbing and many near misses...scary! However crossing the road is much easier in Beijing than in Moscow, as there are many under and overpaths to get from one side of the road to the other.
The national sport seems to be spitting. Everywhere you can see (or rather hear) people clearing there throats and spitting the result of their search out onto the ground, whether they be indoors or outdoors... The government introduced a 50 yen fine but with very little result so far...
Yesterday we visited the Forbidden City, a wonderful maze of a place full of imperial palaces which have been built, debuilt, rebuilt and restored by centuries of Chinese dynasties. You enter via Tian'anmen square, under Mao's portrait, and then through a series of gates (of heavenly purity, of sublime harmony, and of central extremity are some of their names) and pavillions decorated in bright colours, with ceramics and ornate metalwork. The one problem seems to be that the renovations have been done with much zeal and the main buildings have been so perfectly repainted that they wouldn't look out of place in Disneyland... Thankfully some parts deamed less worthy of renovation have kept their ancient charms, especially the ceilings, of which every inch is covered in intricate and colourful designs. A few exhibition halls show beautiful pieces, unfortunately they are covered with a thick layer of dust... and photos are meant to be forbidden but everyone was flashing at everything without the guards even batting an eyelid.
For a communist country, China seems extremely liberal and consumerist. Official guards look more like boy scouts than like the chapka wearing brutes encountered in Moscow. Some web pages are unavailable but so far appart from this blog i haven't come across any. Everywhere there are adverts, neon signs, and giant screens encourageing mass consumerism.
Beijing is a city of culinary experiences. For a few yens you can eat on the street fresh steamed dumplings, meat kebabs, spring rolls, etc... Yesterday we visited "snack street" for lunch and for less than a couple of quid for two we had a spring roll each, a delicious grilled squid skewer and another one of large grasshoppers (Pete insisted and i had to admit it was rather tasty!) and another skewer of mini toffee apples. Tonight we tried some vaccum packed quails eggs which were delicious.
Today we took a bus to visit the great wall of China, and we got the first snow as we were up there. It was very lovely but some say you can see this wall from space, we were walking on it and we still couldn't see much of it! There are very few tourists in Peking this time of year so we were in a bus with Chinese people, and most of them bought mugs with a picture of themselves at the top of the wall.
I am hoping to download some picture tomorrow so hopefully all this will make a bit more sense if you can see it! Ciao!