china

CHINA IS CRAZY.

CRAZY.

we arrived yesterday to Beijing. I took a walk down the next street over from our hotel and it was the most insane thing i've ever seen. it's one of the old neighborhoods that are consistently getting torn down to put up high rises...and i can kind of understand why they would want to tear it down (it looked like a bomb had gone off in more than one place) but it’s sad that old Beijing will cease to exist before too long.
anyhow, i saw a baby in a cardboard box on the side of the road. that's what we're dealing with.

the next big world power has babies in boxes.

the usual suspects went to dinner with one of our friends that has been living here - on the aforementioned road. THIS was truly a hole in the wall. it's one of the more famous duck restaurants in beijing though and i guess even george bush sr has eaten there. it was, amazing. delicious. they brought two whole ducks to the table (heads and all) and proceeded to slice them up from there. (when we were walking to our table a staff member walked past us with two raw ducks just hanging on a string..) they sliced the head in half and i ate a tiny piece of duck brain. it was just sort of neutral - it melted in my mouth. dr b informed me it's not a good idea to be eating brains right now for health reasons, so i'm going to steer clear of such adventures in the future. but, when in rome. everything is family style here and we ate like kings and queens..for 12 dollars.

it's so cheap here.

it's also obscenely dirty. there is dust/dirt on everything because beijing is adjacent to a desert and strong winds are always blowing the dirt through (they have dust storms fairly frequently from what i hear). and the pollution...oohhh the pollution. forecast will call for clear skies, but cleark=yellow-brown-gray-colorless. the whole city is colorless and dingy. the sun is always glazed over.
it's disgusting.

the most noticeable thing besides the pollution, is the scale of the city. it's not quite vertical in the way tokyo was, but it's BIG. everything is on lots of land and just huge. the streets - i have never seen such large streets. i think it is so big to make you feel small - insignificant. it's effective too -- such built presence really does make me feel dominated and necessarily subservient in a way.

speaking of massive things...
today we went to tiananmen square. ONE MILLION people can fit in it at a time. i don't even know what that means.
apparently mao's body is preserved in one of the buildings bordering the square and i really wish we could have gone to see it...it's weird and creepy but i'd totally be into it.
from there we went to the forbidden city, which was disappointing at best. china totally lacks the design sense that japan has. everything is...ugly. the forbidden city is a big deal though -- so i understand why we went. it just kept going and going and going. it was where 26 emporers lived up until 1911 when the Republic of China was founded. Before then it was not open to the public.
in the afternoon we went to the temple of heaven, which was more interesting design wise, but still ugly.

today was difficult because it was super hot and there are people EVERYWHERE. these people aren't friendly the way the japanese seemed to be either; they push they shove they try to sell you stuff (i got hit twice by this man trying to sell me a parasol). in the bathroom line today i let someone go in front of me because there was an empty squatter stall and i wanted to wait for the western toilet and it opened the flood gates. no less than ten women pushed past and aggressively stole every stall. i had to shove my way in front of this lady as to not be left by my group! and worst of all, this women came into the stall with one of my friends who wasn't quiet finished up. she came inside!! that's prettty bold.

we're hitting up the great wall tomorrow (!!!) and hopefully driving past the herzog and de meuron olympic stadium that's going up right now. after we get back i am also hoping to go see the CCTV building rem koolhaas designed, it's in progress as well. there is a TON of construction going on for the olympics right now. apparently no new stuff is to be started in order to make sure everything in progress can be completed by july 2008. they are really trying to clean up their act for the rest of the world.

china is much more difficult to visit than japan - but i'm so fascinated and curious - i wish we could spend more time here.