How can it be over already?

Beijing, China was an amazing experience. I really do miss it. I have learned so much and experienced so many things that I never thought I would. Going to a country so different from America has really made me realize some things, and I am thankful to live in America, but at the same time there are parts of the Chinese lifestyle that I will defiantly miss.


1. PRODUCT RECIGNITION

Even though I was in China and everything looked different and I had no idea what kind of food or drink I was buying. I was surprised that just by looking at certain brand cues such as color or the way a package was designed, I was able to recognize what the item was even though the packaging had no English on it.

Coca-Cola and Diet Coca-Cola

Everyone know what the coca cola brand looks like. Even though these bottles didn’t have any english on them, I was able to tell the difference between the regular coke and the diet coke just based on the colors and design of the bottle. The mind is really a powerful thing. It’s able to pick up on clues that you may not even realize at times. It made me realize how much of an impact the art of design has on society.

2. DANGEROUS DRIVING

“People drive the way they walk. They like to move in packs, and they tailgate whenever possible. They rarely use turn signals. Instead they rely on automobile body language: if a car edges to the left, you can guess that he’s about to make a turn. And they are brilliant at improvising. They convert sidewalks into passing lanes, and they’ll approach a round about in reverse direction of it seems faster”. (Hessler, 28)

After reading Peter Hessler’s book Country Driving, I was aware that driving and even walking in China would be more of a challenge than usual. The first encounter with traffic was walking up the stairs from the subway. Upon reaching the surface we came out right by Mao and The Forbidden City. In front of the Forbidden City was a road that was at least ten lanes across of pure chaos.

I was worried at first that we would have to somehow cross the street, but thankfully they have a bunch of under the road walkways. But that wasn’t the case everywhere. I learned to be a lot more cautious when crossing the road. Chinese drivers stop at nothing. All they will ever is honk at you. I have never been honked at so much in my life.

Then one night we had to take a taxi to dinner. Just the thought of being in a vehicle amidst the chaos was frightening. Especially the u-turn while oncoming traffic was racing towards us. I do admit that through out most of the taxi ride I had my eyes closed just so I wouldn’t have to see all the near death encounters with other cars. I was very excited when I was finally back on solid ground again.

Apart from that I am actually very impressed that I didn’t see more accidents. If people drove like that in America, there would be far more accidents.


3. SMOG FACTOR

Learning about all the smog I was worried that breathing was going to be unbearable. Some days the smog was worse than others, While in Beijing we actually had pretty nice weather. All days were sunny, but not like the sun that we experience here in America. You could barely ever see the sun because the air was always so thick with smog.

“Beijing, like Los Angeles, sits in a sunbaked basin that traps pools of air. There are also solutions. Big industrial plants are being moved out of town, and everyone assumes that when the time comes for the Games, the authorities will do whatever they have to - closing factories, banning private traffic - to bring pollution down to an endurable level”. (Fallows, 14)

Its amazing how much smog there is considering owning a personal car is still kind of a new thing. Our tour guide Lily told us that depending on the last two numbers of your license plate shows the days that you are able to drive. This is probably due to the fact that there are so many people living in the city and the smog factor.


4. BEIJING IS HUGE!
 

It is amazing that Beijing is so big, but yet it didn’t feel that big. There weren’t as many people as I was expecting. I was expecting everywhere I went to be extremely packed and have wall to wall people. The city is a bit more spread out then I thought. The day we went to the Great Wall we took a two hour bus ride, but we were still in Beijing.

“There are nine cities in the United States with more than on million inhabitants. In Chine there are forty-nine. You can be traveling across China, arrive in a city that is twice the size of Houston, and think, I’ve never even heard of this place. This is how it is for many foreign visitors to Hefei (populations 4.2 million). (Gifford, 64)

5. STRESSFUL SUBWAY

Riding the subway was always an adventure. The subway is one of the best ways to get around the city for a very low price. There seemed to be a subway stop everywhere that we wanted to go. There always seemed to be a million people on the subway at all times. I think I saw more people underground in the subway system then I did above ground. Getting on and off the subway is a free for all. You literally have to rush on and possibly trample someone to guarantee that you can get on. Once on you cannot move, thats how many people are on the subway. If your able to sit down then you are a very lucky person.

I was always afraid that I was going to get separated from the group. Being abandoned on the subway, while everyone else made it off. By the end of the trip I feel like I had pretty much mastered the Beijing subway station. I was even able to navigate where to go, which can be pretty difficult when there is only limited English.

6. BEIJING ZOO

When going to China I was really excited to go to the Beijing Zoo. I thought it was going to be my favorite part of the trip, but in reality it was sad and depressing. The animals looked unhappy. The environment was dirty, old, and not well maintained. Seeing this huge elephant in a tiny cell was heartbreaking. Seeing these huge wild cats just pacing back and forth moaning was unbearable. People were throwing things at the animals to make them move. I can’t believe that the animals were treated like that. Different countries have different ways of handling things. Animal rights aren’t as big in china as they are in America. You would never see a zoo that looks like that in the states.

 

7. SCRUMPTIOUS STREET FOOD

One thing I loved about Beijing was all the amazing street food. Everything from the steamed buns to the “egg mcmuffins”. I loved being able to get a filling amazing breakfast for under one dollar. Along with the good street food, came the weird street food. We were located really close to the Donghuamen night market. Which had all kinds of odd foods. I was not brave enough to try anything. But a lot of the people in our group had all kinds of weird things. Including cat and dog! I was actually surprised at how many wild cats I saw. Some of them were quite straggly. I just wanted to take them home not eat them. I wish street food was more common in America. It’s the thing I miss most about Beijing.

 8. THE PRICE IS RIGHT

Shopping in Beijing is super fun. It’s a whole nether level of shopping. I was a little nervous about haggling at the beginning. But once I got the hang of it I became an expert, maybe even addicted. There was nothing that I couldn’t haggle down to a price that I found reasonable. It was like playing a game, whoever could go lower wins... I always won. I found so much cool stuff, that I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to fit it all in my suitcase, but I did.

9. COST OF LIVING

When arriving in China I was at first concerned by seeing all the high prices, but then I realized that the exchange rate was amazing. It was about 6.50 yuan (or Mao's as we called them, since Mao’s face is on every single bill) to one US dollar. Most things I bought were under a dollar, like bottled water. The cost of living was just so cheap. As our tour guide Lily says, every Chinese mans dream is to have a Japanese wife, American house, with a Chinese cost. Money didn’t seem to have such a big effect on culture as it does in America. Everything is fairly affordable, and store owners seem happy. I loved buying things at such a cheap price, that I almost felt obligated to give them more money. 

“I kept discovering on acceptable brand of beer that cost half as much as the beer I’d had the previous day. It was the Shanghai version of Zeno’s paradox: The beer became steadily cheaper yet never quite became free. I had an early surprise discovery of imported Sam Adams, for 12 yuan, or $1.50 per 335ml bottle, which is the regular U.S. size. The next day, I found a bottle of locally brewed Tiger, the national beer of Singapore, for 7 yuan, or 84 cents per 350ml. Soon I moved to 600ml “extra value” bottles of Tiger at 6 yuan (72 cents per 600ml), then Tsingtao at 3.90 yuan (45 cents per 600ml).” (Fallows 5).

10. CENSORSHIP

I always knew that certain websites were blocked in China. Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, and various other social media sites were blocked. Anything that the Chinese government doesn’t want you to see will be blocked. The government puts up a front and tries to do whatever looks best for the country. But people will always be able to find a way to get around the blocks.

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“Until I installed a “proxy server,” which allows my computer to tunnel under and around the “Great Firewall,” I was amazed at the parts of the Internet I could not reach from China.” (Fallows, 19)