things they don't tell you in the tourist guides
I am a consummate tourist: Great Wall and the Forbidden City within two days, and I am all sightseeing'd-out. The Forbidden City is so vast that it defies all attempts at photography, and I found myself having to be content with photos of a tantalizing suggestion of dragon-shaped tiling, an ornate corner hinting at wider motifs, a column coyly chopped off halfway down the frame. My best attempt at a larger sense thereof:
one thing: the Beijingers have outclassed everyone else - no people could possibly be ruder, in general, than the locals here. I've a theory that the sheer communal vastness of the Chinese population desensitizes them to the value of the individual. Like most things, it probably comes down to a bastardized sense of economics - people regard others as worth less because supply is so high. This of course means that it's more acceptable to jostle past me and step on my foot in the process without apologizing, or barge past me and jump into my taxi, or throw my change back at me when you collect the bill, or narrowly miss my leg with your CONGEALED MUCUS.
it's hard to convey the sheer magnitude of population here in Beijing. yesterday in the taxi we drove past seventeen gargantuan apartment blocks. thinking about the number of lives in there made my head hurt.
what I can convey is the sense of pollution. I haven't seen blue sky ever since I got here, and "sunrise" and "sunset" are more of a lethargic gradation in and out of visibility than any sort of visible celestial movement. and even when it's light, all the roads into central Beijing wash uncertainly into the sky.
and perhaps it's the way the city is drenched in grey watercolour that engenders such general nastiness from the local populace, but here, all zebra crossings also have pedestrian traffic lights, and neither of them makes one iota of difference. crossing the road is still a battle to the death of man (or small-asian-girl) and machine, every time.
but this doesn't change the feeling that I've just got to start making plans to come back here for a whole year after I graduate. like, seriously.