Here some tourist notes on China and a new photo gallery. Beijing!
Beijing subway is quite modern. But it is quite noisy, more because of the people than of trains themselves. Il is very big, more like the one in Paris or Moscow, and it develops rapidly. They plan on adding 20 stations more till 2015. You have to force a bit to exit the car as people who want to enter are pushing with a polite smile. It seams that it's in their blood to get somewhere first, pushing everyone aside.
No one leaves seats neither for aged persons nor for women with children. Once, in a bus I let my seat for an old lady. At first she was surprised and the rest of the trip she looked at me with a deep respect.
People are not reading in subways. Instead they are listening to the music and watch films on their phones.
There are no beggars as we are used to see for instance in Canada, where to stay on street is more like a personal choice or an expression of a notion of liberty. In China poor people prefer to sell something to tourists or collect bottles. Rarely one can see a real beggar with dirty clothes and physical abnormalities, who is just incapable to work.
People are usually dressed well everywhere. Even in hutongs, where toilets, running water and trash are outside, people are wearing white clothes. In the mornings one can see people in pyjamas wondering around their homes.
Dress code of the young girls is bright shorts, T-shirts which should cover shoulders and obviously no décolté! Rarely one can see skirts or dresses. Ladies wear black pants, chinese slippers and silk coloured blouses with long sleeves. It is quite simple to distinguish women-tourists as they show shoulders which doesn't seam to bother locals.
Mao-soleum is quite impressive - an enormous building in the middle of Tiananmen square. The line to see the great China man is about a kilometre long and can make a full tour around the edifice. Thought it is moving rather fast and in 45 minutes you are done. It is hard to appreciate the insights as guards do not let you neither stop nor take photos. But there is anyway not much to see. The only thing visible is Mao's unproportionally big head of an abnormal yellowish colour. A lot of chinese people lay flowers, which they buy at the entrance. Generally everything looks respectfully, monumental and grandiose.
Guards on this square impress too. They stand straight on an elevation under parasol and, as robots, every 6 seconds turn their head right, left, right, left. Funny.
As always welcome to www.artiomkusci.com
