The Shindog Blog
We'll I have an excuse for my missed blog ... chromi has arrived from aus! So we have been busy trying to find him a place to stay ... it hasn't been easy ... he has been rejected from every budget 'lu guan' in the area! I'll go into more details about that one tomorrow! He lost the welcoming sign i hand scrawled out for him! which is the title ... beijing welcomes chromi ... well we were there at least to meet him. Any way we've been out to do some 'mao munching' shots in tian anmen! It was a pretty awesome day for a 1st impression ... |
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| I took it pretty easy on him for a first introduction to chinese cuisine ... we went to a 'B' Level restaurant. These signs started popping up pre olympics and were aimed to give clients and idea of what the government thinks of their cleanliness and health standards. I think ultimately it was to get the restaurants around town to all lift their game and minimize the number of cases of 'BJ Belly' ;) The best is an A ... the worst is a D ... although i've never seen a D ... those ones usually don't get a sign! Although i've eaten at plenty of 'ungraded' restaurants. I have ended up in hospital ... but only once in 2 years .. so your odds aren't too bad! |
a good ol' bowl of ju rou (pig meat) and noodles (mian)... |
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some beef (nu rou) and rice (mifan)... hao che ma? (good eating?) |
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Theres was an interesting new addition in central bj .... and please 'refuse to step on' . Like don't get our polished stone all grubby! |
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not quite the malls balls but not bad! |
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| Where else to go but the centre of beijing! Unfortunately the photo op position was taken up ... and being queed for ... |
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| That is the BJ zero point ....i guess they'd call this ring 0! |
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| it's located right at the emperor's front 'lookout' gate. Say thats a nice lookout post! |
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| then we wen't to practise some bargaining ... old bj's market streets are a never ending source of amusement and great for shoppers who want to learn to negotiaite in putonghwa! oh and the moon is pretty huge! |
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and now onto todays funny thing ....
Shenme Dongxi!!!
"every day in china you see something (shenme dongxi) you don't see every day" [one billion customers; auth : James Mcgregor ..lessons from the frontlines of doing busines in china]. This little section is dedicated to that weird or strange thing which inadvertently you see everyday in china .. so to prove a point i'll see if i can find one 'mai tian do' (every day).Tri Wheelin Outlaw Da Dee... (taxi?!?) 14.11.08
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Recently in southern china theres been an ongoing strike of taxi's ... they are complaining about management fee's and 'unlicensed' operators. Like this one below ... although they usually have 4 wheels ;)!. The driver is standing nearby, he is waiting to pickup some customers from the bus stop nearby and taxi them home on a chilly beijing evening. The fare of course is negotiable and xing weiguoren's (aliens :) will have a hard time haggling them dowm ... but if you know the flag fall of a regular 'licensed cab' it will help ... but if there ain't none nearby you better be prepared for the walk! In bj the normal flag fall for a cab is 10 kuai ... about 2 bucks .. that'll get you 5 km or so ... if you don't know where your going that 'nearby' hotel might actually be a bit further than you planned! I'll go into more details on cabbing in a later blog ... this is about the naughty ones the real cabbies don't like ...so do people really hop into strangers cars willy nilly ... you bet! sometimes cabs are lite on and the ol chinese are very enterprising and trustworthy of each other! the normal negotiated fare is 5 - 20 quai ... they usually have a little 'red' light hanging from the rear view mirror to signift that they are 'up for rent'. With chromi's late arrival we got stuck out at a subway stop which required the use of a 'unlicensed' private taxi ... you see out at guo yuan there ain't too many taxi's ... it's not quite central BJ! ... he say's 'do all chinese drive like this?' .... i said ... not really ... there usually a lot worse :) . Traffic in BJ is crazy! Riding in one of these things is pretty weird ... you get that kind of motor bike lean going on! In BJ ... (and the rest of china for that matter)...anything with wheels and a second seat is up for hire (just add 3RL!) ... no amount of protesting is gonna change that! |
