first impressions
day one in Beijing and observed some interesting things. first, jing has such a luxurious apartment all by herself! nice condo with security guards in lobby and with van gogh and other imitation paintings hung up in apartment. then i step out and like few streets down some ppl live in dwellings so tiny and cramped i cannot help but really feel the stark contrast.... and i thought it was interesting how you had to go up to counter and buy paper tics to take the subway. and u hav 'subway conductor' sitting at entrance to tear your ticket.... which made me wonder, what if it's rush hour.. how they manage? i guess i'll see in the days to come. cos when i went out today it wasn't even rush hour and there were already quite a lot of ppl.... what other random things did i do? ate a o.60 RMB (about 12 sg cents) dou4 sha1 bing4 and felt very happy. ate very cheap jiao3 zi at dumpling fast food restaurant. visited one of the biggest bookstores in Beijing and was really impressed. cos there really were a lot of adults seriously pouring over non-fiction books.... ppl sitting on the floors really studying books... dunno if it's cos everyone is so thirsty for knowledge, or driven by pressure to upgrade themselves in competitive environment, but their shang4 jin4 xin1 is quite impressive. and baffled by how they have so many translated foreign texts... saw like translated Stiglitz econ textbooks among others.... yet they have no foreign mag. perhaps only National Geographic. no TIME, no NEWSWEEK/ Economist whatsoever... why. i mean if they allow foreign texts, which technically are considered foreign publications, why not magazines... hmm unless maybe this bookstore doesn't stock? dunno yet. haven seen enough =) anyway quite difficult to find internet cafe here... so prob wun be able to blog till some days later. =)