How do you do? You love me, I love you!

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"How do you do? You love me, I love you! Won't you take me by the hand cause I wanna be your friend!"

The above lyrics are to an Ace of Base or Aqua style pop song that encapsulates just how little the Chinese REALLY know of the English language.

Beijing. North capitol. ... It's changed a bit in the last ten years.

We could talk about the laundry list of historically significant tourist sights we saw. While places like the Summer Palace, Forbidden City, and even the Great Wall of China (at Simatai) are spectacular in all the ways you might imagine, our experience wasn't really out of the ordinary. These places are fundamental to anyone's trip to China. They should be visited by all. They are also, however, probably not worth writing about here.

The lasting impressions beyond the obvious (like "holy shit that is a big long wall") were not really what we expected. For one, Beijing in winter is bone achingly cold. What would have been a four hour tour through the Forbidden City that first afternoon was actually quite happily completed in just two and a half due to the unfortunate weather. Being Canadian and all we thought we'd take it like champs ... we were wrong.

Beijing (as distinct from itself 10 years ago and from every major city anywhere) is also inhumanly clean. We don't mean the streets are devoid of trash in the back alleys and whatnot, but rather that the skyscrapers and main thoroughfares looked ... scrubbed, for lack of a better word. It's actually quite eerie being such a hugely populated and polluted city and have the glass towers gleam like new. We have a sneaking suspicion that the recent Olympics might have something to do with it.

So with a weary admiration for capitol cleanliness we headed off to the 2008 summer Olympics site full of Phelpsian excitement (Lynn was itching to go swimming in the infamous Water Cube) and ... instead found death. No, not real death. Rather, we found the Bird's Nest, though gleaming from a distance, covered in a thick grey-brown soot that ought not have been there only half a year after the most dazzling Olympics ever. Military guards were everywhere. A cordon around everything so they could overcharge us to take a wander through (the bottom levels only).

The Water Cube? Same deal. Money, fences, and NO SWIMMING ALLOWED. Things got creepier the further along you went until at last you came upon the utterly immense Olympic Convention Center at the far end of the boulevard ... deserted, in disrepair, and depressing.

It started to sicken us. No-sustainability at all!? 13 billion dollars for a freakin' one off?! We had to leave.

Too bad we had to leave on the Beijing subway system which is overcrowded in a haha-take-THAT-Delhi-train-system kind of way. It's also the least functioning, worst laid-out, and most frustrating subway ever, but whatever, it was only for a week.

Having said all that, we really did have a fantastic time in Beijing and the Great Wall. It's just that our unique experience of the place seems to have been mostly negative. The vastly disproportionate positive experiences in town were much like everyone else' we imagine. The food continues to impress, the sites are so overwhelming weeks wouldn't do them justice, and the city as a whole feels alive.

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Comments

[Jackie]

Wow, I can't believe that about the Olympic venues... are they insane, wait, don't answer that. They could totally make some cash from letting tourists swim in the water cube, and would it not do them good to keep up appearances, at least for a year.... I am sorry your experience of the wonders of the city were overshadowed by some not so ideal ones. Glad you are still enjoying all the yummy food though!