Musings from the Far Easy: First few days....

It has been quite a first couple of days here in China. I arrived Wednesday evening and immediately thought one of my bags has been lost in transit. To make matters worse, the bag that got "lost" was the bag that had all my Summer stuff in it. Note to those of you planning a year long trip somewhere... Split your Winter and Summer stuff up evenly between the bags you are taking, the thought of having only sweaters and coats when its 90 degrees outside in Beijing was terrifying.
     So the bag I had "lost" was actually blue, not black. Luckily the airport personnel caught me before I exited the airport without my blue bag filled with all the clothes I'll need for the next 3 or 4 months.
   I am met by a couple of Chinese people with a hand scribbled sign that said only "EF" on it. That is the initials of the company I am working for, so I wave at them, say something in English and quickly realize that they don't speak a word of it... That's fine, I am in China now. If they were Chinese republicans (and who knows, they might be!) they could have been complaining to each other about how I was in China and I should speak Chinese damnet! But alas, I don't. Not yet.
    We go to their vehicle and I get my first look at Beijing. My smog filled home for my next year Beijing.

Beijing... Polluted, but it does have its charm

Aside from the sky at times, Beijing is a really pretty city. The architecture is very neat and there are trees everywhere! There is also construction everywhere. I counted 20 cranes that I could see from a single spot while in traffic on the drive into the city. From what I'm told, China doesn't worry to much about the long term when it comes to buildings. They build an apartment building, use it for 8 or 10 years and once it gets run down, demolish it and rebuild. This doesn't make a lot of sense until you realize they have over a billion people who all need jobs and this keeps them busy.

Now, a couple of things you need to know if you ever come to China:

First, there are no real traffic laws. They have traffic signs, even speed limits, but they don't mean anything. At least the people act like they don't mean anything. Staying inside your lane? No way. Driving the posted speed limit? Ha! Blinkers? Most Chinese have probably never heard of them. Its not really that bad on the highway, but when you get in the city and the drivers are zooming past pedestrians while narrowly missing them, it's terrifying.

That brings us to the second thing you need to know; Cars do not stop at cross walks. They honk and expect you to get out of the way. Pedestrians have no rights here, its crazy.

So my drivers get me to where I am going and I meet up with Michael. That night we hang out with a couple of his British colleagues and we bond over hating the French and futbol. We go to the expat bar area called Sanlitor and have way to much to drink while taking way to few pictures. I'll get some next time I'm there, but it is a really cool area. Street food of all sorts, vendors hawking pirated DVD's and who knows what else, and bars packed with people from all over the world. We had shots with some canadians, talked with what I think we Jamaicans, sat across from a Russian and a French guy... Beijing is truly an international city. I love it.

The next day I slept until 2 (Jet lag! Not alcohol mom and dad, I promise) and then we hit up one of the silk markets. The silk markets are the places you hear about where the sell all sorts of fake goods at low prices. They have everything from t-shirts and jeans to jewlery to electronics to rifle scopes. I am not kidding, they sell knock-off rifle scopes! The best part is, everything is negotiable and normally the real price of an item is very low. Now, the Chinese vendors are not stupid... They see a white person and immediately jack up the price, but Michael had been here before and quickly got the price to more reasonable levels....