A Few Observations

Leeks at a nearby restaurant

I've been here for about a week, and already Zach and I have a list of "only in china" observations that have intrigued or often humoured us on a variety of occasions.

1. Everyone seems to constantly be mopping:
We have seen it at 8 am, 12 pm and 10 pm, people constantly mopping or sweeping. We have seen young, old, men, women and even children partaking in this strange obsessive phenomenon. Enough people participate that upon returning to the same store in one day we have seen the same person mopping the same area again. Whilst we walked along the street the other day, we actually saw a woman mopping the side of a building.....for China to have such an "unsanitary" reputation, we have seen people clean more than where both of us are from.

2. They handle vegetables differently:
We have seen leeks on street floors, melons on the ground, cabbage and leafy greens attached to bikes and even live chickens attached to fences all over Beijing...we question the sanitation heavily. These foods by the way, are the ones actually used for selling and not just abandoned foods on the street. The leeks were from a restaurant and the giant melon(?) is from outside a grocery store.

3. You get run over:
Street signs and stop lights can not even be compared to a suggestion of rules. Seriously, even the locals run across the street when they have the chance and so far we have seen a woman get backed up into, and a man on a bike get hit by an SUV. It is terrifying crossing the roads at first, but the longer you stay here the more confident you are when crossing which we think tends to help you cross...almost like a little prove yourself game to the taxi cars (who are the worst). The more meek you are about crossing the less likely they are to stop for you. We understand now too that crossing with a local helps since they study the flow of traffic a bit more than we have had to back at home.


4. You will get stared at:
You get three looks here in Beijing: curiosity, neutral and condescending. I am very very blonde so for the most part Zach and I get stared at because of this, but people in Beijing cast certain looks at western people. The first look is harmless, you get people just staring and smiling at you or looking at you in awe. The other day when we visited Tiananmen Square we had about 5 people ask to take photographs with us because we were Western and they had never seen a non-Chinese person!

The second look is neutral, mostly given out at tourist spots such as the Pearl market where they are so used to selling things to western people they don't care about how you look.

The third look is almost condescending, and we tend to get this a lot from elderly people and 40+ men. This look can sometimes be a bit weird, but we just smile or ignore it. It isn't meant to be offensive and we really just class the look as a "they are foreign and weird" experience.

5. They can come off as cold:
We have had the idea of waiting in a line, holding open doors, saying please and thank you and basic etiquette stripped from us while here. While most Chinese seem to be polite when in shops, riding the subway calls for you to be just as pushy as the Chinese. I haven't heard a single excuse me or pardon me while here, and you are simply expected to push your way through waves of people on the trains to get out to your stop. Lines at tills are a free for all and you have to edge up close to the glass when people start wanting to get in front of you. We don't know if this behaviour is really a cultural thing(we think the no lines policy is) or is simply an attitude towards us because we are western. When we use some of the Mandarin we have picked we seem to garner a little more smiles and politeness from the locals.... but it is very difficult to adjust to a place where etiquette seems to have to be earned!