I LOVE Beijing! It is definitely the best city I have been to in China (above Shanghai and Guangzhou)! It's my first trip here and there are quite a few things that absolutely wowed me and quite a few things that gotta be uniquely China!
Here are a few that struck me for different reasons:
a) Their infrastructure ROCKS (especially after the visit to India last week, the contrast is shocking)! The roads are huge and well organized and the city is very clean. It's far better than what I was expecting! In fact, the whole of yesterday night I was repeatedly telling everyone that Beijing (at least the area near my hotel) looks very much like Japan. The way the paths are all grey and precise, how every thing is so clean and tidy, even the trees looked the same!
b) The Tianenmen Square! It's incredibly expansive and quite a sight! I loved the traditional structures all around! One can almost feel the Chinese pride going around the area.
c) I love the fact that the city has so many typically traditional buildings bringing the chinese heritage in the middle of all the tall, modern buildings!
d) Chinese food continues to make me shudder - today's menu offered Duck Heart Dumplings and Duck Blood Soup. No words! And no, I didn't order either of them.
e) Talking about food, I loved all the Chinese snacks and sweets that were catered at the consumer research centre today - I think I was eating non-stop for about 6 hours in total. It had everything from gumballs, dates, something called Tiramisu that tasted nothing like Tiramisu but was a baked thing with a huge quantity of delicious cream in it, chocolate cakes with marshmallows, and various other things that I don't know the names of. But there were all Yummy!
e) A few buildings on the way to the Tianenmen Square had every sign, including the name of the buildings even, in some foreign language (my guess it Greek or Russian). Wouldn't have expected either of them to be abundant in China for buildings to be catered exclusively to them!
f) My colleague who was suffering from a severe cough, very excitedly got some Chinese medicine, and discovered that one of the ingredients was called "Semen" in English! God save her.
g) I loved the Wanfujing area where we roamed about. It is a huge non-motorable street with shops on either sides and small stalls all around that sells drinks, ice creams, and apparently even a hamster. It was quite fun going around, peering into all the shops, enjoying the pleasant weather and generally chit-chatting about China with my Australian and Chinese colleagues.
So yes, Beijing is really, really nice! Very impressive!
I loved beijing too...I was in shanghai for 9 months so had visited beijing! You should go to the great wall of china..its amazing! But I love Shanghai better as a city:)
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