favera

Do not spit, do not through through litter and do not push in lines. Apparently, this is what kids study in schools these days. And I can see why. People spit a lot here. I'm just not very sure why, but I have never seen so much spitting on the streets. You can even see little boys do it probably copying their fathers. Did I say "on the streets"? Well, I'm writing this entry after spending about 2 weeks in China and I have seen people spitting in all possible locations. Yes, that includes streets, houses, museums, buses. You don't need to wait long till you hear this loud bubbling sound of stuff going though the nose followed by the smack of the lips. Tuan is saying it has something to do with being Asian, but ... read more

To finalize the whole Beijing experience, I need to add that we did go to the Temple of Haven and we did find a good restaurant. After our not so great visit to the Great Wall, we kind of wondered around the Qianmen square, saw lots of slums being demolshed and a very cool dirty street with lots of food and stuff for sale. The street is parallel to the one which is currently under construction, as Chinese seem to build and rebuild a lot, and the cool street is half demolished itself. We found this restaurant (Jin Zheng Yang), which I probably remember the most in Beijing, right near Lao She Teahouse and according to the popular location and appearance we first thought it's just another tourist place. Actually, the place is not touristy at ... read more

Let me start by telling you that I'm actually vegetarian. Well, not quite, since I do eat fish, but I say no-no to all the birds and other animals, except of frog. So a duck would be a bad choice for a meal for me. However, I was in Beijing and everyone was talking about the famous Peking duck so I just had to try it. It's not like I have to try every single famous thing on the planet, but being in such exotic place like China and not to try the duck would be a miss. So I thought. The duck has been around in Beijing for a long time and there are several famous restaurants to try it. Of course, in Beijing many restaurants claim they have it but we were determined to ... read more

Ok, it's time to start a more chronological account of the China travel and I start with our first stop, Beijing. First steps there were like arriving to a different world. Never ending unstructured line to the immigration, people jumping all over us at the exit of the airport, and the taxi scam, all was there for our entertainment. I guess we had to go through all this so that we could get better at navigating here. The guy who grabbed us at the exit pretended to be the official taxi service and sent us through some airport maze to a car and said it's 300Y. We didn't know any better due to the lack of preparation. While in the cab, we started reading the Lonely Planet that informed us that it should be about 100Y ... read more

Sleeping for 2 hours before departing from Boston didn't do it. Flight to Beijing did not do it either. Upon arrival to Beijing we went to a local ballroom dance social event. Not sure how we didn't collapse on the floor, but it was actually quite fun. The dance was for the Chinese Valentine's day so most songs were slow, though even with that, I'm sure the amount of water we all produced collectively from our bodies would exceed the amount produced in Walker during a summer social at MIT. On the learning side, I got introduced to a couple of Chinese ballroom variations. One of them is danced with swing music and looks more like hustle. It's fine, after all there is American style in the US. Another dance related activity we did was a ... read more

It's not in the United magazine, but the route we took from Washington, D.C. actually goes through the North Pole. So, to photograph North Pole, you simply need to take the super secret route between D.C. and Beijing on United. Keep watching outside. Yes, it's painful most of the time because it's day all the way between the cities and it's really bright. Start taking pictures when you're about 8 hours away from the destination. That's right, you'll get some pictures of clouds. The clouds are actually pretty cool. They come in layers and the layers have very sharp ends: Now, I said keep watching outside, because before the North Pole, the plane goes over a number of very interesting islands, like Baffin Island. The views are spectacular, so relax, eat Chinese instant noodles and enjoy ... read more