The Bottle Women of Beijing
You can’t help but notice these people around because if you are anywhere near your last drop of water in a bottle they suddenly appear out of no where and take the bottle from you. It works well for both parties…you don’t have to haul it around until you find a bin and they can get a small fee at a recycling center for it and sustain themselves that littler bit easier! If you travel Beijing and bought a Beijing tours then you will experience more when you travel in BeijingAnd if you are thinking that they only bring the bottles home to refill with water and sell on tomorrow, they don’t as when they take them off you they crumple them up as small as possible in order to put as many into their bags. But if you take a break at a park and see these women competing for the bottles you can’t help to feel a little sad. These woman, many of which are quite old and frail are here day in day out, week after week, year after year cometing for in essence what is only a few pence. Sure it keeps food on the table but is it any sort of life?
Chop Sticks/ Cockroaches/ and Squat Toilets?
One of us have it wrong. Its really a game of east versus west
here. The west has knife and fork/ SMALL (Squashable) little insects
and well toilets that you sit on and think about life for a
while….The east has Chop Stick/ Roaches that could easily feed a
family for a week around here and well toilets that frankly double as
ab training centers!
Smog!
You just can’t get away from it in Beijing. They say that being out and about in Beijing is the equivilant of smoking over 70 ciggarettes a day! And traffic cops out here have reached the half way mark of their life at their 21st birthday! At the moment in preperation for the olympics its meant to be a whole lot better. They are forcing factories and certain building sites to close and on certain days only odd or even numbered cars are allowed to drive the roads. Normally, It is not unknown for roads to be closed due to poor visability because of the smog. So, if you travel to China, please check for more China travel information in details.
The Tourist Spots.
Fasinating but remeber in a country of 1.3billion there are tourist, tourists everywhere! So prepare to que and only half see everything! After seeing what it was like in Beijing and hearing the report back of not even being able to see the warriors through the crowds we made a concious decision to bypass Xian. Thats where the Qingdao came in!
Chinese Torture - Crossing the Street.
No matter where I have been in the past, it all pales into insignificance for crossing the street than when trying cross the street in China. The green light is not really a “safe to cross now” sign. Its more of a “Well its no safer now but hey you can’t stay there all day so why don’t you give it a go!”. That was reall brought home to me when I realised that the second the green man came on to cross the street, the green feeder lights also came on for traffic turning onto the street from other roads. No wonder the buses were always blowing there horns at me!
Queing for trains.
March of the Penguins…need I say more!
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