Beijing autumn

Despite various formal definitions of year seasons, I personally stick to following events denoting season turnovers:

• winter–spring: trees start growing leaves,
• spring–summer: this one is fuzzy, no clear definition yet,
• summer–fall: trees start having orange/yellow/red leaves,
• fall-winter: first snow or day temperature below zero.

Similar to this year’s winter–spring transition, I had left Prague in late (already cold) summer and returned when trees turned orange. Thanks to my employer I was visiting my colleagues located in Beijing offices.

Spending most of my life in Europe, I experienced many novel things that are worth recording in this post.

Before travel

I had planned to run a 10 km race the day before my departure, however, I was so stressed from the travel that I gave up due to symptoms of commencing cold. The nervousness stemmed from: no cash (juans), no understanding of Chinese language nor script (I knew just emergency phrases), unknown environment, no control (I had to rely on pre-arranged taxi service) and probably travelling alone that far. However, after I arrived, I suddenly felt healthy (and just tired) – this way I learnt the travel fever is a real thing and there is no reason to worry about that.

Society

• Very poor knowledge of English
  • I couldn’t chat even about weather with a taxi assistant.
• Despite I couldn’t understand a word, I heard radio advertisement is same both in Europe and Asia.
  • Ear-drilling melodies, repetitions, creepy tone of voice
• hukou similar to visa, however, for for cities.
  • You have to obtain that to be a full citizen of Beijing.
  • Business reasons/work for government/education (PhD.) helps.
• Output/input corridors with arrows in metro.
• Pointless security checks in metro (they cause queues).

Food

• I had forgotten to be scared of chopsticks before the travel. Thanks to that nothing prevented me from learning to use them quite quickly (despite my clumsy style).
• Sharing food is common, you don’t have your dish on your plate.
  • Somewhere assisted with rotating tables.
• No explicit courses, you just randomly pick food to match your taste.
• Sipping is OK, spoiling the tablecloth as well (they account for that).
• Hot water is often served as the basic beverage.
• I got used to spicy food (I may have a cough afterwards).
• Meals:
  • hot pot
  • fried noodles
  • noodle soup
  • noodles in sauce with meat
  • dumplings (yeast, “ears”)
  • shrimps
  • cabbage
  • Beijing duck
  • little soft desserts
  • fermented soya milk (similar to butter milk)
  • pumpkin soup

Chinese style, people, culture

• Long queues at customs (not used to that in Schengen area), alleviated when more people shift began.
• Elevators are missing (not always) floors with digit 4 and also number 13.
• Heavy use of smartphones (booking, maps, transport, payments) and many “phone zombies”.
• Women often walk in pairs holding each other.
• No hipsters.
• Tourist buses transporting people to the Olympic Park used highway as parking lot. (Two of four lanes were completely blocked and there was a bottleneck where buses were turning.)
• Evening dancing lessons on playgrounds in hutongs (mostly for older women).
  • Tai chi is exercised in parks in the morning.
• Chinese people are very good at queueing (hard to beat them).

Sites, environment

• Beijing appears to be a modern city, well organized by system of rings (the first ring encompasses the Forbidden City, 7th ring is being built and it’s a highway 150 km far away from the center).
• Hutongs are traditional streets with flat houses and yards (siheyuan).
  • Now they’re only inside the second ring, many were destroyed to make place for modern buildings.

Work

• My first impression was relative mess on the desktops, some people even had gym equipment besides their tables. (I got used to that in few days.)
• Apart from that offices appeared similar to Europe.
• Public toilets are often squat toilets and the western restrooms are missing a brush.

Misc

• I was afraid of publicly blowing my nose after readings on the internets. It turned out it’s just normal.
• Cars are like trams in Prague (they’d run over you if you don’t watch out).
  • Especially watch out for bicycles and rikshaws who usually ride the places where people tend to wait for a green light.
  • Green light is not a guarantee of safe road crossing.
• Individual car transport is fast thanks to street grid between 10 PM and 6 AM (sic). Otherwise it’s paralyzed by continuous rush hour.
  • 5 million cars, registration plates restrictions (based on last digit), you have to win an official lottery to be entitled for own plate.
• I bought a bottled water in local supermarket. Despite the cap looked like it had a valve, it was just that shape, no valve inside.
• Because of language barrier I had to use non-verbal communication more/more intensively, which was exhausting (forced smiles).

Jet lag

• I flew 6 hours eastwards, it took me ~3 days until I could sleep at night and not be sleepy during 10 AM to 3 PM.

Smog

• Smog is to various extent plague of Eastern parts of China.
  • You can smell it outdoors.
• People are used to that, they just watch particulates reports and wear respiration masks (they are almost a fashion item).
  • 500 ppm (~0.5 g in cubic meter) is maximum range of official instruments.
  • My guess is that 1 in 30 people wear the mask. (They don’t wear it not to be contagious.)
• It limits visibility and sunlight.

Contrasts

• Hotel limo vs Airport express, 20 times more expensive.
• Narrow, crooked streets adjacent to the Central Banking District.

Kanji characters I learnt

It is easier to learn reading Chinese than to speak/understand it.