I and my mother wanted and planned for a long time our voyage to China. Et voilà we have made it!
I love this world: A moldavian of ukrainian nationality, lithuanian routs, russian culture, with canadian passport living in Québec going from Moscow with a transfer in Dubai with Emirates Airlines to Beijing tasting Holland beer and Australian Wine!!! Hallelujah!
Dubai airport deserves some attention. An edifice 6 stories high and 94 football fields long filled with extra luxurious boutiques: Apple and Rolex, diamonds and gold, silver and golf stuff. Everything is presented as normal and ordinary, only things necessary for tourists. And not to forget the heated toilets and bides!
It seems strange but we have almost frozen in the terminal. Outside temperature was +37 and inside the building +18! Nevertheless we have been offered a free breakfast in the morning and the service of Emirates was one of the best I have seen.
To Beijing we arrived late at night and were surprised by the humidity. It was almost 90% at night. Tired and surprised by the climatic changes we departed to our hotel.
As a matter of fact we have never managed to get accustomed to the weather. Neither the next day nor during the whole stay as the humidity was high. The second day the sun had risen as well as the temperature.
At first glance we have noticed the following:
- Toilets, they are everywhere, free of charge, almost clean and every 200 meters in hutongs (quarters with narrow passages and streets)
- In the restaurants portions are as big as in the States
- People are jogging in the evenings and making exercises even in 40 degrees (celsius), and not to forget the humidity
- Almost every chinese person is small but well built. My mother was two heads higher than most of them. Though younger generation, well nourished, are sometimes as high as we or even higher
- There are a lot of old people, visually 80 or higher. A lot means that one can notice a lot. They are outside, walking, talking, and are quite active for their age. They look 80 or their life let them live that long
- Everything is clean and is cleaned up day and night.
- There are numerous tobacco stores though we have not seen a lot of people smoke outside, on streets or in public places
- People play a lot plying-cards
The second day we went to silk market. Actually it was more over-publicized tourist attraction. When we entered three girls rushed to us offering T-Shirts, scarfs, tissues and other stuff. They were screaming in our ears in something like chinesenglish. In about 20 seconds they have found out that we speak russian and tripled the attack trying to use russian words. When we were running out of the store we heard the most tough one crying that she was willing to sell something to us 15% the initial price!
As in order to get to this market we had to cross several streets to got acquainted with traffic tules or with their absence as it seemed to us at first glance. People, velos, motos rush in car traffic and cars cut other cars. There are a lot of cars which carry as many people as can fin inside. We have noticed a lot of Volkswagen and Buick makes and the latter are more numerous in China than in States. And they are making them locally.
Another thing is that there is not much of political publicity or communist propaganda. But this later.
