Being in Beijing with all of China

Hello people.

It feels like it's been a few days and things seem like a bit of a blur to be honest. We arrived into Beijing late Sunday night and made our way to the hostel we booked online through what seemed to be a pretty seedy alley into one of those hostels that is chuck full of foreign hooligans looking for a good time...not that we aren't but we more look for places to sleep.

I have a friend who lived in Beijing for a while and told me the people were mean and I must say that in comparison to the other cities, they are much less friendly (is that pc?) but it is most definitely the capital city of a communist government. And oh yeah, we landed here the eve of their national holiday....BAM! So China has a billion people and I think half of them are in Beijing. It's called Golden Week and so we have a whole week of it and lucky that's our time here. There are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ( each of those o's are like a million people) many people in the city which makes things like seeing the Square and the Forbidden city more like trying exercises but we are holding off until after Thursday when our friend arrives. We were going to leave the city and come back but were told there would be no way to get back in so here we are.
So we got up the first day (the actual national holiday) and walked amid the sea of people, walked through Tiannamen Square with all of China, and decided to just get out. So we went to Silk Street which is the market we always hear about selling all the knock offs and Gortex, etc....Holy freaking cow. It had it all and more. Everything you could ever want (or not want) was there. Each booth had several assistants who knew english and there was a reverberation of " hey lady you like" coming from literally every angle. It was borderline insane. Each of the 4 levels had different stuff. shoes, handbags, clothes, glasses, watches. tailored clothes. The whole lot. You would ask the price and they would say, "most special price for you, 1800 Yuan" and you would walk away and they would say," for you 200!" and that was before any haggling. Lucy got a really beautiful Chloe handbag (that retails for 3000NZ) for super cheap and it is a pretty darn good replica and we picked up some funky little shoes (NZ 10$, US7$). It was overwhelming but as we are somewhat seasoned in the effects of markets, we did a complete browse of the whole thing before we went in again....much suggested approach as you could spend you savings in the first booth where as by the time we were finished the wander, the novelty had warn off and we were ready to leave.

Since were weren't  going to be able to leave the city, we decided to find a quieter hostel and we found just that, the Lotus hostel. So we will be here for the next few days. Once Jason gets here we will see the sights and plan our trip to Tibet.

I only have a few minutes left but would just like to mention a few things about Beijing. There are public toilets....more like community toilets. So not everyone will have a toilet in their house so there are community ones since the system just couldn't handle it. So you will see people just wandering the alleys in their pjs brushing their teeth on the way to the public toilet. The wafting smells of open sewer are special. And people just tell you what they think. Today I was in a pharmacy and this woman who worked there pointed to my face and said "bu hao" not good...about my pimple face. Good thing I have a moderately stable self confidence. And these girls at the market yesterday called Mike a rabbit and pointed to his little tummy and asked when he was going to have his baby..all this was in chinese...ok?

There are Olympic posters everywhere and I think it is going to be pretty interesting come next summer as ( well at leas for the moment) everything is manual...tickets for the bus and the subway, there are workers for all this. But I guess it can't be any busier than we are seeing it now.

Tomorrow we are going to rent bikes and bike around the Hutongs (which are the little alleys all around the city). It certainly feels like a city of fantastic history...the heart of china. Hopefully Friday we will be going to do a 10km walk along the Great Wall.

It has felt really good to just chill out a bit and have some down time ( no site seeing) these past couple of days. The beds here are the softest we have found as well as the pillows.

Luego.

c& m

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