中国 (Zhong guo / China)

We have arrived. I read once that living in Milan is equivalent to smoking 7 cigarettes a day. Beijing is closer to 20. Driving a taxi from PEK airport towards Beijing, the city skyline was slowly emerging through the smog.



Today's question has been: how has China so far been different from our expectations? Since I arrived pretty much unprepared for this trip, having read about four pages in my Rough Guide. But still, everyone has ideas of China, and they're always mixed. I think of China as wast mountains and poor farmers, but of course Beijing is different, with modern tall building and cheap consumer electronics for everyone in this "socialist" country. Basically it is, like john appropriately noted: a giant China-town. Lots of restaurants selling "chinese food", communist slogans (the people's republic is for the people. Selfishness is immoral, thinking of the community is honorable)



Food is good here. And cheap. Although you can get duped -- while we got a wonderful and big meal for 3 people with beverages for about ¥50, we also got tricked into buying coffee for ¥30 each, where ¥=SEK. That's an immense difference. Where the subway ticket costs ¥3 for instance, you can get a coffee for 30, it's like you could get a coffee for 200 in Oslo. Insane. Even for Oslo.



Otherwise we've gone to a temple with one of China's largest Buddhas, and it's actually carved out of one big tree trunk, according to the tacky information from Guinness Book of Records. No pictures, since a munk-dude told us not to.

China is full of Chinese people shouting "Hello", but also full of Swedes talking Chinese. People in restaurants are giving the menus to John who looks Chinese, but is sadly illiterate, while Jöns understands an incredible amount of signs. By the way -- the sign for illiterate in Chinese means something like "eye that doesn't understand the sign'cube'", because it's such a simple sign. Tricky.

Anyways. The other pics I uploaded.