Beijing

Sorry updates have been a bit lacking of late, kinda got out the habit in China, but I shall attempt to address the issue now. So yeah, sleazy late night phone calls aside we got to Beijing without incident and its awesome from the start. Like really awesome.

Lady in the airport goes out of her way to ensure we have a taxi, walks us to the stand, stops the car, explains our destination to the driver and fixes the price. We get to the hostel and its cool. The staff are all smiles and speak good English and there is a real buzz about the place. Amanda (they all give themselves English names yeah coz we cant pronounce Chinese) the manager is young, dynamic, determined and full of helpful advice. She’s friendly but you get the impression she don’t take any shit either. Pretty much the epitome of every Chinese person we meet. Hostel is full of people from everywhere you can think of, is right in the thick of things at the end of some street bursting with life and beer from the shop next door is 3 yuan (30 pence) for a 660ml bottle.

So our introduction to the capital of the worlds most populous country couldn’t have been better really, the rooms are nice and as I say The Happy Dragon hostel downtown Beijing is possibly my favourite place to be anywhere ever. Go there, you’ll see what I mean.

So we do the sights; Forbidden City is cool, very Chinese as you might expect and full of cool looking buildings. We go the great wall as well, catch a ski lift up to it (its how they got up there when they built it I reckon) and catch the toboggan back down (haha). The best bit about Beijing for me though was just being there and soaking it all up. Everyone we encounter, and I mean everyone, speaks English and goes out of their way to help us. The people here give a really good account of themselves, even those doing menial jobs do it with a quite pride and dedication to what they are doing that you don’t get at home. The streets are clean, the traffic is well directed and on every corner there is some dude in a uniform smiling at you only too eager to help out.

I’m waxing lyrical I know but Beijing just seems to work; there is history and culture and character by the bucketful, its easy and cheap to get around, the food is exceptional and cheap and the people are great. The way people we have met conduct themselves makes me kinda ashamed to think about the reception foreigners get at home. If China is the next world superpower I can see why; it’s the people that do it. There’s a determination, optimism and forward thinkingness about them that I really admire. There isn’t any arrogance and they just give a really good account of themselves.

Whoops used that phrase twice I just realised. The account they give of themselves is really good ok. As accounts you give of yourself go the account given to me by these people, of themselves, was really good. If I had to pick a good self account someone had given me as an example of a good account of yourself to give I would pick the account of themselves given to me by these people.

Now obviously I didn’t meet all 1.3 billion Chinese people during my 5 nights in Beijing and I’m sure there is poverty and human rights violations by the bucketful too. They probably have their fare share of wankers as well. Plus your in danger of getting run over by a tank if you don’t tow the line but from what I saw the people here are awesome and give an example we could all learn from.

But anyways enough sycophantic sociological semantic bullshit. Beijing rocks, come here and you’ll see why. Things that stuck out for me were the guy at the bbq restaurant who ordered our whole meal for us with typical unassuming helpfulness (thus giving a good account of himself in the process), the Russian expat who helped us get a taxi, The Happy Dragon staff who, I have no doubt, could quickly and efficiently organise world peace with a smile if someone asked them to and the street the hostel was on which had everything Chinese you could imagine. Streetside food vendors, knock off clothes shops, dodgy ‘hair salons’ open well past midnight, old men in their underpants playing majong and more strange writing you don’t understand than you could shake a calligraphy scroll at.

Our time here was great, next stop Shanghai. ‘city of sin and ill gotten gains where fortunes are made on the role of a die’.

We’ll see Mr. Lonely Planet China. We’ll see.