Holy censorship, Batman!

13.8.2010 | Day 13 | 8792 km | Beijing, China

Ah, China. The best place in the world to catch up with your friends via Facebook, watch funny videos from Youtube and update your Google-provided blog. Goddamnit! Everything is blocked, making things a bit difficult for a Westerner during a trip like this. But enough about that and my deepest apologies about the delay of this blog.

The Badaling Great Wall just continued on and on...

Anyways, Beijing. After four days and now (again) in a train to Shanghai, I left the historical city with mixed feelings. All the sights we saw, Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City and especially The Great Wall were massive and fantastic to see. But the people living in the city are something that I still can’t believe.

The rudeness is just something else. If you’re waiting for the subway and standing beside the opening doors, that’s the first thing you’ll be doing wrong, 20 Chinese will walk straight for the doors in front of you. If you’re going to wait until the exiting passengers have left the train, that’s the second wrong move. The locals will start entering the train as soon as the doors open, making it very difficult for others to get out and causing a massive block - and when you actually get in, 40 Chinese have boarded the train before you. So, use your elbows and ram through people. That is how this city works.

A Chinese style boat coming to pick up
people to see the Summer Palace

Waiting in a line for a ticketing office booth, or well, anything that requires waiting is also something just not possible for these people. If again you don’t use your elbows, people will come from the sides, so that they can do their business faster. And don’t even think about holding a door for the locals, it’s a 100% certainty that they won’t do the same for you or say a simple thank you. During our stay in China we’re only able to see Beijing and Shanghai, so we aren’t going to experience what people are like outside big cities. And that is a shame, since I’d like to see true Chinese people, who most likely are completely different. We still got to see a glimpse of how people might be outside these big cities; People coming to see the sights were very happy and for some reason also wanted to take photos with us. So, we probably ended up in about 5 different photo albums. I feel like a rock star now!

I’ll also end on a positive note. Beijing is a very safe and clean city to travel into, so if you want to climb The Great Wall, it’s a good city to stay for a while. The subway system is very cheap and easy to use, as every sign is written also in English. It’s also the safest, since every bag goes through x-ray check. Only problem about the subway is still, that it’s massively overcrowded. But somehow it was expected!