Saturday, April 18, 2009

Can Beijing possibly be more polluted than Mexico City in the 80's?

Yes it can! Since arriving, the dusty clouds hanging over the city never disappeared - impossible to really tell what season it is. I suspect some sunshine but can't be really sure.

Lessons learned: don't take the emergency seat if you want to sleep. I've been pretty happy when I found out I had been seated there until I realized that the toilets were besides the emergency exit, that Chinese aren't really what you would call discrete AND that they apparently just love hanging around the toilets.
Next: kids still have a hole in their pants. I remember the pediatric I went to as a child had a picture of a chinese boy (well I was sure it was a boy though I never had the chance to verify) with his buts uncovered. It is said that some "male problems" Chinese seem to have quite regularly are due to wearing these pants as a child. For me that was a kind of "old-communist-rural-China" tradition. No Sir, that one still exists and we've seen it yesterday while visiting the Bird's nest and the Water Cube. Being the only Westerners in the area AND the only people wondering about the half-naked boy, I assume this finally not so ancient tradition still goes on.
Got to suggest that one to some friends :-) "Son, you need to go to the toilet ? Just take a seat."

I also realized that I prefer arab by far to chinese - a bit of a stupid comment as I speak or understand neither of those languages but still: arab is smooth, melodic and even calm. You could fall asleep in front of a TV switched to an arab channel (maybe not Al Jazzeera but more like "die sprechende Briefmarke", some might remember :) In front of a chinese TV channel you're just good to get a heart attack. By the end of yesterday all I wanted is to tell them to shut the hell up, stop yelling at me I didn't do anything to you!!! Take away the Nazi-part of german - chinese is worse!

On the programme today: Silk Market and Tiananmen. We probably won't make it to the chinese wall which is like a 2h drive from Beijing.

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