In the end, I made it to the hotel pretty quickly. Perhaps it took half an hour. Not surpisingly at the hotel English is spoken. Not well, but spoken. That is a relief. I have a room on the 22nd floor
with a view of the city, but the air is so thick there is not much to see. It is like the air is full of dust. The Beijing air seems much worse than Shanghai (or at least worse than my recollection of
Shanghai). After settling in to my hotel room I decided to take a walk around town and grab some dinner. The restaurants in the hotel looked very expensive, so I asked the concierge for a map and started walking. Much like Shanghai the streets are full of bicycles. Sometimes one person on a bike, sometimes two. Never a helmet. Often the "passenger" is just sitting side saddle on the pannier rack. The car drivers is crazy. There seems to be a "right on red" law here,
but it is certainly not required to stop. I can't tell you how many cars I've seen speeding into the intersection to take a right turn when the light is red. It looks like they think they have the right
of way. Bizarre. And they have to cut accross the bike lane to the the right, which wouldn't be so bad, except the cyclists seem to think there is "straight on red". I actually saw a cyclist stuck in the middle of a 6 lane road going back and forth, trying not to dismount, while traffic zoomed on either side of him. Death wish.
My hotel, Kunlun is in the north east part of Beijing near ring road 3, which puts it about 3 miles from the forbidden city. According to my map, the forbinned city is the center of Beijing. I obviously don't really know the neighborhoods, but there were lots of people out on the streets and a fair number of restaurants, supermarkets and other such commercial establishments, so I felt pretty safe walking around. Finding a restaurant that "looked good" was another story. Finally, I landed myself at a Chinese Restaurant (surprise), whose specialty was "Peking Duck" (surprise again). I struggled through the menu, my chinese not being quite as good as my hebrew, and eventually selected based on the english desriptions and pictures -- mandarin fish, spicy green beans, rice and local beer.
As I waited for my food I watched the waiters wheel out whole roasted duck after duck to the other patrons. The waiters would carve the duck up right next to the table. They seem to be pretty skilled at carving, and despite that fact that I often carve chicken and turkey, I found the experience nudging me toward vegetarianism. Just then a waiter stopped by my table with a plastic bag. Oh no, I don't want take out. What are they thinking? The waiter held open the plastic bag so I could see inside -- and there it is, my fish. Alive or dead? I'm not sure. I smiled and said, "OK". He disappeared to cook it. I really didn't need to see the fish before it was cooked. Really. I wish I could have explained that, but the only phrase that comes to mind is "Nee How?", not "Don't show me the the raw fish, just cook the damn thing." They brought out the whole fish, and left me with my chopsticks to fillet it. It was a little difficult and I managed to
splash the sauce all over the table several times -- which is good, because I have a feeling I'll be eating the same thing for the next 8 dinners.
Getting back to the hotel was pretty easy. I was still amazed at the low quality of the air, and now I am up at 5:00AM suffering from jet lag. The air is just as gross as yesterday, perhaps even worse. I would NOT want to be an olympic athelete in this city -- let alone a resident breathing in this junk. I've seen the "smokers lungs" before. I wonder what "Peking Lungs" look like?
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