Delicious Air

When people ask me what I miss most about home is it weird if I say the air? Boulder, Colorado has some of the most delicious tasty air ever! How can you "taste" air one masy ask- when you come to Beijing you will be able to answer that question.

Now, I am a fan of Beijing, but the bigest problem that I have with the city is the pollution. Some days the clouds set in and you can taste the dirt in your mouth. (On these days I would not reccommend chewing gum.) Your eyes will sting from the dust and your lungs will gasp for air. You will suddenly understand why a sergical mask may seem like a good idea. This is a sad but real drawback for Beijing.

This is a picture I took from my office window on a particularly dreary day. I compare it to one I took many weeks ago on a much clearer day. See the differece? You can't see much past the brick building when there is thick smog.

Resting on the Wall

For some reason I am obsessed with this picture. I took this while on a more secluded sections of the Great Wall called Simitai in Northern China. This guard was just hanging out on a rock right next to the wall and taking a nap. Once he noticed us snapping photos of him he simply waved and went back to sleep. Oh how I love China...


Other Photos from the trek:

Cutest Chinese Girl Ever.

This is at a carnival that I helped organize for a mall opening event. We had a variety of rides as entertainment for the kids while their parents shopped. This little girl looked so angry that she was put on these rides I couldn't help but want to give her a hug. And I did! After speaking with her mother, I found out that I was the first foreigner she had ever met!

Differences in Daily Life... that are not really all that different.

Housing:
The housing situation in Beijing really runs the gamut. Some people live in housing communities known as "Hutongs" which are complexes that are in the same building and share a courtyard. The are usually a one-level square building with an open middle garden area. Depending on the size and expense anywhere form one to eight famillies may live in one building. These are all built next to eachother which creates the small alleys that weave through the city, very much the a suburb in the States.
Since the Olympics and with the uncontrolable development of the city, many hutongs have recently been knocked down and replaced with more practical and unsightly towering apartment buildings. Which is a shame, but is part of Beijing's development into a metropolis. So now the majority of people live in highrises.


But if you can get far enough away form the city, You find my all-time favorite type of housing: Yurts. None of the frills of the city like electricity and plumbing, simply a round room with a table and some blankets in the corner for the cold winters of northern China.

Differences in Daily Life... that are not really all that different.

Food:

Lunch with my Chinese colleagues is always an experience. The traditional Chinese lunch is usually served in an orange delivery container consisting of meat and rice. If you are really crafty and on your game, you can make an effort to order dumplings or rice noodles and hope they come quickly while still warm. If you have the time and energy to brave the crowds, there are numerous hole-in-the-wall places that will serve a variety of Chinese specialties. Make sure to get there before noon so that you can get a seat!Everyone in the city breaks for lunch at exactly 12:00.

Hotpot is a common lunch during the winter. This is a hotpot restaurant that has a moving belt with many vegetable options on it that can be thrown into your pot and cooked for a nice warm veggie soup! Meat is also cooked in the pot which is seasoned in a variety of ways.

Differences in Daily Life... that are not really all that different.

Transportation:

A big struggle with living in any major city is traffic, yet Beijing takes it to a whole new level. I personally have never seen anything like rush hour in the city. Combine the relative novelty of cars in the city with the lack of real training in driving and multiply that by the 4 million plus cars on the road and you have an equation for gridlock. The fact that the “stop hours” last from about 7:00am until 10:00pm when the city is literally a parking lot makes other forms of transport very necessary. The subway is quite usefully, but also gets jam packed at peak times in the day so I try to avoid it around 8am and 6pm. So I choose to bike, which allows me to move through the stopped traffic and still make progress to my destination. Although it is anything but a smooth ride, millions of bikers take to the streets every morning. These bikers then have to dodge pedestrians and the cars that choose to use the bike lanes to get ahead in traffic. Other obstacles include the silent dangers of the electric bikes, men with bikes stacked 10feet high with styrofoam, and other random debris left in the streets. And don’t forget your mask as a feeble attempt to block out the pollution.

This is my bike. My first week here I met an expat who had lived here for 8 years. I asked him what his number one piece of advice was to a newcomer in Beijing. He said "get a bike." Then, as my luck would have it, he was leaving Beijing the following morning to move back to America and gave me the keys to his bike. I look forward to the day I can make someone's life infinately easier by doing the same.

Her name is Giselle.