Hello!
Imagine yourself walking in downtown of Beijing. It could be very interesting. You find boutiques of Bugatti, Ferrari, Aston Martin, a spectacular presentation of Audi R8, and suddenly, just nearby, you find yourself on a small road surrounded by filled-up tiny shops selling every imaginable and non imaginable things and restaurants cooking outside a sort of bread balls soup. Then you get "squished" between walls on each side of a street which hide and protect from noise and exhaust private life. In such courts live 10 to 15 families, each in its own room. All commodities are outside, clothes hang everywhere on clotheslines, old people nap in shadows and small children crawl and play around them. By the way children look wise, they are surrounded by care, and often are carried in father's arms. Very small children are completely naked, bigger ones wear pants with a hole. Imagine the quantity of pampers saved! Children do not scream, dogs do not bark. Everything seem cozy though rather squished. But it seems that Chinese people are already got used to such life and do not step on numerous neighbour's feet, as well as a lot of caretaker's and cleaner's feet (all wearing special working clothes, well equipped and wearing masks) and hordes of tourist's feet (every time at least 60 persons in a group). Every tourist carry umbrella as it is extremely hot in summer. Modern umbrellas are used everywhere and generally it is hard to find nowadays classic fantails as a lot of classic object are vanished from everyday life. For instance it seems that everyone in China wear T-shirts and shorts.
After visiting Beijing we went to Datong by night-train. The trip had its own peculiarities. We got to the train station several hours before departure. It was crowded by passengers. Chinese feel very comfortable in any situation, thus it was normal that we saw people sitting on stairs and on the floor and even sleeping in corners. Children have the privilege to sit on newspapers. One family even brought a mattress and eat sunflower seeds spitting on the marble floor. The train was late and we had to wait in a stifling hall for several hours. No one was admitted to the platform thus when the train finally arrived everyone tried to squish through the exit forming a nice jam. What is really surprising was that everyone already had assigned places in the train. Inside the train all the people suddenly became calm, civilized and polite. Everyone ate fast, conductor collected the garbage, closed the curtains, turned off the lights and everyone went to sleep. The train itself was silent, USSR-like model, with 3 superimposed couches, visually used and screeched though clean. Even air conditioner worked.
In the morning I was observing the countryside. Not noticing horrible villages-tunnels without any tree and piles of trash a little bit everywhere, even in fields, before my eyes appeared modern, industrialized and cultivated vast territories.
As always welcome to see my new photo gallery!
