Second Day in Beijing

After spending a bit more time in Beijing, some of the original glow has gone away. It's not as bad as some people might have you believe, but Beijing is still far from being a first-world country capital.

Despite government efforts to eliminate spitting, it remains a popular activity of the locals. Also, you will still sometimes see aberrations like a 3 or 4 year-old girl being told by her father not to be shy to take a piss on the sidewalk, right next to a metro station (I wish I could have taken a picture of that without the risk of ticking off the father).

The roads are not as orderly as they first seemed to me yesterday. I did see a moron with his motorcycle going the wrong way on a major road. Also, cars won't stop for pedestrians. Cars on two-way streets that want to turn left don't give right of way to traffic coming the other way. Everything just works by ad hoc reactions. Taxis hide seatbelt buckles under a sheet that's meant to protect the backseat from getting dirty.

A lot of people seem clueless. Just as Japan would be more efficient if it was less organized, China would be more efficient if it was more organized.

By far, the biggest problem in Beijing is smog. It's bad. Really bad. It's an order of magnitude worst than Mexico City (which is itself pretty bad to start with). It's so bad in fact that it's impossible for me to really get a big picture of the city as I can't ever see more than a few blocks away.

Today, I went to see a few temples (BORING!) and the olympic stadium. Many people utter the word laowai ("foreigner") when talking to each other around me. Children are more direct and will sometimes say to me stuff like "Ni hao, laowai" ("Hello, foreigner!") or show off their two or three words of English to me. One was particularly funny because after saying "Hello! How are you?" (and not understanding my reply), she had her family take a picture of me with her. It's interesting to be the subject of such fascination.

I met a Korean friend that I had last seen in Seoul two years ago. She now works here as an English teacher. I had quite a pain finding her place and went into a few wrong buildings before ringing the bell at her apartment. However, she was waiting for me somewhere else. So, I tried finding a phone to call her. There wasn't any around. Then, I asked a small gang of Sino-Koreans if they could help me. They lent me their cell phone. When I failed to reach her by phone, I asked if there was an Internet cafe where I could check my email. One of them took me several blocks away to show me where the Internet cafe is. Then, she helped me buy some online time and log on. She also offered her ID card at the Internet cafe. In China, you need to provide ID to gain access to the Internet. That way, if you rant against the government online, they can track you down. Before I actually got to go online, the two other Sino-Koreans joined us in the Internet cafe; they had gotten a call from my friend on their cell phone which I had used to try to reach her. Then, after giving me the chance to speak with her, they took me to her location. All this attention and care from total strangers! I love being white! :)

My friend, her boyfriend and I had a Korean dinner and talked about our lives and such. I learned from them that, in China, you pre-pay your electricity with cards. (A bit like you pre-pay pay-as-go cell phones in North America) They had forgotten to top-up their electricity credits and had just gotten cut off. I guess such a system makes sense in a market where many people would otherwise give late payments. In first-world countries, however, such a system would make electricity companies lose money because of absence of service to all the people who can pay on time but just forgot to top up their credits.

On my way back from seeing them, the taxi driver "made a mistake" in his route to my destination and wanted me to pay extra for his "mistake". This is the third time a cab driver tries to screw me in Asia. The two previous ones never got a penny from me. This one got the money he would have gotten if he had taken the normal route to my destination because he made it clear that he wanted me to forget about the whole thing when I took his driver ID and told him I would report him to the tourist police. One of my secret dreams is to bash the brains in of a dishonest taxi driver in Asia. Maybe next time.