sour fish soup synopsis
I'm not sure if this is a problem limited to us personally, but we can't open trainspotterspotter. Butwe'll keep adding entries anyway, in the hope that it will reappear. We would email the nice people at blogspot for assistance, only all the text on their site comes up in Chinese here, so we can't read how to do it...
Not to worry, there's plenty to keep us occupied here. Today we hired bikes and went for a cycle around some of central Beijing. Just to indulge in a bit of transport talk for a moment, the roads are wide and the cycle lanes (often shared by pedestrians, but then the footpaths are sometimes shared by cars) are wide (at least 4m, and one seemed to be about 5 lanes wide), and there are still plenty of people getting around on bikes, so there's a critical mass against the cars... for now... but the cars are not at all patient, and things may not stay this way for long. There are trolley buses, and even brand new bendy buses, so our London cycling experiences were very useful in this count. The metro is excellent, people are polite, and a trip only costs 3 yuan - that's about 21p!!!!!
Roll up now for the 2008 Olympics!
The last couple of days have been a holiday here, it seems, and people are out in force, iceskating (and icecycling) on the frozen lakes and canals, playing hacky sack and practicing tap dancing in the park, and generally taking in the sunny weather.
A highlight for us has been the food - it is soooo tasty, and cheap, and it is soooo good to see some fresh vegetables again after the rather meat and dumpling-heavy cuisine of eastern Europe, Russia and Mongolia. We're in heaven. On the street you can buy roasted sweetcorn and sweet potato, and hand made honeycomb and skewers of tiny toffee apples.
On Saturday we vistited the Forbidden City - a massive complex of Ming and Qing era buildings which was very impressive, and which had an excellent garden of ancient trees. We wouldn't recommend the Roger Moore-narrated audioguide though, firstly because it doesn't actually have much information, but also because of his very annoying pronunciation of the word 'balustrade'.
We walked home via the ritzy Wanfujing shopping street - full of department stores and fashion shops. In an English Language bookshop we found last week's copy of The Economist magazine, which we always like, and noticed it had a couple of interesting stories on pages 26 and 27. One was about the (highly embarrassing) Sydney race riots (what the hell's that all about!!) and the other was about a recent protest in southern China during which police opened fire on the crowd. Turning to the relevant page, though, we found it had been ripped out. Suspicious, but not really believing it was intentional, we checked a few more copies, and found the page had been ripped out of all of them. Obviously the Chinese government is as disturbed by the Sydney riots as we are.
Not to worry, there's plenty to keep us occupied here. Today we hired bikes and went for a cycle around some of central Beijing. Just to indulge in a bit of transport talk for a moment, the roads are wide and the cycle lanes (often shared by pedestrians, but then the footpaths are sometimes shared by cars) are wide (at least 4m, and one seemed to be about 5 lanes wide), and there are still plenty of people getting around on bikes, so there's a critical mass against the cars... for now... but the cars are not at all patient, and things may not stay this way for long. There are trolley buses, and even brand new bendy buses, so our London cycling experiences were very useful in this count. The metro is excellent, people are polite, and a trip only costs 3 yuan - that's about 21p!!!!!
Roll up now for the 2008 Olympics!
The last couple of days have been a holiday here, it seems, and people are out in force, iceskating (and icecycling) on the frozen lakes and canals, playing hacky sack and practicing tap dancing in the park, and generally taking in the sunny weather.
A highlight for us has been the food - it is soooo tasty, and cheap, and it is soooo good to see some fresh vegetables again after the rather meat and dumpling-heavy cuisine of eastern Europe, Russia and Mongolia. We're in heaven. On the street you can buy roasted sweetcorn and sweet potato, and hand made honeycomb and skewers of tiny toffee apples.
On Saturday we vistited the Forbidden City - a massive complex of Ming and Qing era buildings which was very impressive, and which had an excellent garden of ancient trees. We wouldn't recommend the Roger Moore-narrated audioguide though, firstly because it doesn't actually have much information, but also because of his very annoying pronunciation of the word 'balustrade'.
We walked home via the ritzy Wanfujing shopping street - full of department stores and fashion shops. In an English Language bookshop we found last week's copy of The Economist magazine, which we always like, and noticed it had a couple of interesting stories on pages 26 and 27. One was about the (highly embarrassing) Sydney race riots (what the hell's that all about!!) and the other was about a recent protest in southern China during which police opened fire on the crowd. Turning to the relevant page, though, we found it had been ripped out. Suspicious, but not really believing it was intentional, we checked a few more copies, and found the page had been ripped out of all of them. Obviously the Chinese government is as disturbed by the Sydney riots as we are.
posted by Wednesdays at 2:18 AM
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