Beijing, baby! (part 4) (i promise this is the last one)

And now for the fun part. Please allow me to share with you some interesting, erm, particularities of life in Beijing.... 

OK, i know i've mentioned this before, but the first astounding discovery was the fact that everyone and everything is LOUD. Of course it's bound to be, since there are always about a million people standing around you at any given moment: 

And getting around can be a pretty cut-throat business - you get shoved around, bumped into, yelled at, people cut in front of you in lines.... but, surprisinlgy, it can also all be very disciplined and organised. Buses and metro lines run smoothly and comfortably, and the most amusing expression of this rare discipline are the tourist groups! They put on their neat matching baseball caps, gather around the guide's megaphone and obediently allow themselves to be rushed through the sights...

Competition between the red caps and the yellow caps was fierce all through the forbidden city.
(my money was on the reds - i'm glad to say we won)

This strange tendency for discipline just might have something to do with the, erm, omnipresent military: 

outside a neighbourhood school!!

And speaking of schools, another fascinating (so to speak) eccentricity has to do with chinese toddlers. Apparently, they're not very big on diapers - why have a diaper when you can cut a slit through the back of the kid's trousers and have them squat by the side of the road whenever nature calls??? (and then let the kid hop back on your shoulders - now that's what i call fatherly love...)

True story. When i discovered this i started following around the little ones trying to snap
pictures of their bums, but then had to stop because i thought that might seem just a wee bit weird.
I promise though! you see that ALL THE TIME. 

What else did i learn? Oh, yes - the food is strange, and sometimes you don't really want to ask what it is you are actually eating, but it tastes GREAT. Especially street food.

still have no idea what this is

Also, sichuan cuisine is bloody spicy, and if you get served something that looks like fish soup, it isn't, it's just fried fish swimming in the spiciest oil concoction you'll ever taste in your life, so beware.

Also, i learned that chinese people don't eat scorpions, nor cockroaches, nor grasshoppers, nor any other sort of insects. I mean, i'm sure they eat their share of weird stuff, but the infamous Donghuamen market, where you can order yourself those finger-licking fried crickets, is nothing but a tourist trap. I think that's brilliant: it must be hilarious for the locals to watch all the tourists pay to proudly crunch on a scorpion skewer.

For the last bit, i think i'll let the pictures speak for themselves... 

on the desktop of the hotel computer

downtown Beijing

Price list at the hotel spa - i'm still wondering what that ovary care service was.

Despite all its, erm, quirkiness, Beijing is a fascinating place. and even though everything is crowded and loud, even though everything is supervised, controlled and censored, the people are friendly, kind (even when they just seem to be yelling at you!) and warm, and they're really what that made this trip so much fun!