We are staying quite centrally and are close to many old hutongs (old BJ style houses) and cafes, and just one block from a strip of shops that sells interesting books and clothes - the cool kids hang out here and a sign of some interesting urban culture.
However, after a day or two out and about sight seeing and hanging out, I am just feeling that Beijing/China is starting to get at me. Since leaving the somewhat sheltered campus life in Shenyang I've started to really feel how glaring suffocating it is to be in the capital city of arguably the world's most controlling, corrupt and least politically free countries in the world. Its not just how smoggy and sterile this place is, but the sort of attitudes they possess here in the big city, and the complexity that it is experiencing being both "over preparing" but in fact "under prepared" for the biggest international sporting event in a year's time. Could it be that everything bad about China is right here in Beijing?
Just a few examples which got my knickers in a twist:
- Trying to upgrade from hard sitting only seats to soft bunks on the over night train from SY to Beijing - the train conductor was extremely rude and unprofessional to me and called me an idiot in front of the whole train for expecting to upgrade when I am "38th in line", which was half an hour after she told me to come back in half an hour
- MSG is not salt, is not sugar, but a vicious chemical that not only kills every other natural flavour in your food, but most importantly will strip the shit out of your mouth-throat-stomach and eventually your brain, so stop putting it in your fucking food
- Taxi driver at the train station quoted us Y100 for a trip that one would expect for Y18 - calm now, just walk away....
- I was at this shop and picked up some paper fans to have a look. I asked the shopkeeper how much it was. She took one look at me (so you can tell I've been backpacking for five months?) and snapped "Are you going to buy it or not?" and as soon as I said "no..." she literally snapped it off my hands and walked back into the shops leaving me there speechless
- Bad mannered hotel staff who can't spell service in their own language if they tried. You don't bang the door on guests or throw pens at them just because you don't like your job
Its not that Shenyang or Haerbin was absolutely free from the similar bureaucratic bigotry that I've felt in Beijing, but definitely being in the capital where the Olympics are to be held next year, the intensity of the pressure certainly multiplies. There are signs everywhere listing the things that you "aren't allowed to do" - in both writing and in pictures. No firecracker in parks is understandable, but if you need to have a sign telling people not to piss in public says either a) enough people are pissing in public to make this a problem or b) you just feel like saying this cos you're a control freak. Either way doesn't say much about you or your public does it? There are policemen everywhere just lurking around keeping an eye on everyone, throwing power trips whenever they feel like. We couldn't even flag down a taxi because we weren't at a designated taxi rank. SHEEEEESH. No wonder people hate obeying to rules here - its a backlash against simply having too many rules. Its gotten so bad that people are posing as policemen and fining people illegally because its such good money and so well accepted to never question authority when it presents itself upon you. Crazy I know! Can't they understand that order and cohesion can only be sustained with acculturation, and not with brute force??
How they are going to make it through the Olympics really is beginning to baffle me. They prepare for the Olympics by 'skimming the surface' without addressing the underlying issues. The streets that are done up are the big boulevards and the popular shopping strips and the main roads. The backstreets remain dirty and unkempt and the public toilet cubicals have no doors (not that its a problem for me personally, but the contrast is just a bit too blunt). They expect citizens to be polite to foreigners but not each other. Security guards at department stores or tourist attractions have the most official looking uniforms and hats - then down the bottom they wear sneakers with their dress pants?? Every shopkeeper can speak fifteen languages - but only "hello", "thank you", "goodbye", and "that will cost you XX dollars". And the little Friendlies (Olympic mascots) - official versions are nearing Y20,000 each, but on the streets you can buy the same thing for Y5 - except it'll fall apart within 3 hours instead of 3 days. They've wheeled out or locked up the dissidents, the squatters, the criminals, and pretty much everyone else that's slightly interesting out of sight of these poor innocent foreign tourists - not realising that themselves, the PRC government is their most embarrasing thing on show. -- OOOPS!
Many of you may have read about "face" in Chinese and other Asian cultures. How to give and loose face etc. well what I have been talking about here is a very typical example of a face demanded very audaciously (by China), given very reluctantly (by the IOC), and will probably be lost very embarrasingly (by China).
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