| Anything I write about Beijing will be
obsolete by the time you get there. It is changing so fast it is
unbelievable. On my first visit in 1986, there were armed police in
watchtowers at every road junction, you had to fill in a list of everything
you were bringing into the country and the only place you could get a taxi
was at one of the major international hotels. Tourists had their own
currency to prevent locals buying luxury goods, an unlikely scenario with
a teacher's monthly salary of less than £25. By 1990, there were rather more taxis,
there was even some non-cycle traffic on the inner ring road, but you
still could only change $50 per day at the Beijing Hotel. The
cancerous presence of McDonalds had, however, already contaminated the
city. Still no street lighting more than 100 metres
from Tiananmen! By 2000, there were seven concentric ring roads,
ATMs on every street corner, twenty-storey mirror glass Bank of China
(albeit the window cleaners had to abseil down the facade) and taxis everywhere
at a range of prices. But still the charm remains and you
will be stared at because you are weird looking and giggling waitresses
will hide round the corner because they are too timid to serve foreigners.
We learned a few characters (fortunately the same
as Japanese) and were able to fluently order "meat" and
"rice"; unfortunately never managed the "without goats
testicles" bit of the phrase. When we were lazy, we
just dived into a hotel where at least the menus were in a kind of
English, but mostly we wandered into any restaurant that took our fancy
and took pot luck. If you order enough dishes one of them will be
edible. We took this approach in a noodle bar and ended up with
three tables covered in steaming dishes. Still at less than $1 each
it didn't really seem to matter. |
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