What a Great City...

So here I go again, this time with another round of great new Chinese methods of doing things differently:

Seat Belts: As i told you, there guys are crazy during driving, crossing the road, riding the bicycle or anything that assembles a moving motion and a human being. So, after the first experiences of near crashes I decided that the best is not thing about it and just relax and put the seat belt. That's where my plan just went to the garbage. Although taxis have seat belts, 90% of the times they don't work. Don't ask me why but I tried dozens and got very few to work. And when I ask the taxi driver, they just look at me and start laughing. And then put their seat belt... yes, because theirs works. :-(

English: Although the taxi drivers don't speak english, the Taxis are all equipped with a little recording in English that they just turn on when arriving to the destination. Now, due to the huge push in the economy, most of the cars have the instructions in english because they come from european brands or american. No wonder they drive like that. The car says "Hand Brake On". Saying that or "The soup is served" is the same. ;-)

Suzie Wong: Now, don't tell me this is not typical name you would expect in a multicultural place like Beijing. It's a disco, and with that name it could only be good. You just feel attracted by the name. You think about the story of the name and just return to the past and seem to live in a completely new world. To go if you pass by Beijing.

Transformers: Now, if anyone has ever seen cartoons in the 80's, I'm sure you remember the "Transformers" and because Manga is also very big here, I went to the cinema with a few of the ISU people to see these great machines in action. The difficult part was that I went there after the rest, without knowing where the cinema was, and nobody speaking in english. Best advice in China: find a person that speaks chinese and english, get their mobile phone number, and never lose your mobile. It can save your life.

So eventually I got to the movie 5 minutes late, but because the noise was so big, I could not hear on the phone where the rest of the people were. And because it was the Premiere of the movie in China, the movie was in every room. There was 5 rooms in 3 different floors. I went to each one in the dark, went in, tried to look around to find them, seated, saw the movie was in chinese and got out. I managed to find them in the 5th room. Now, try to do this talking to people that do not speak english, plus I had no ticket so I needed to convince the employees to let me go in without ticket and by mimics. Uff, hard but I finally managed.

The movie was great, if anyone likes the typical american movie of action, explosions, shooting at everyone and everywhere, babes, fast cars, and of course Robots...

One little detail about taxis: they always tell you that they know the way where you want to go, but most of the times they don't. So they just stop in the middle of the street when the feel they are lost, leave the car running with the clients inside and go ask in the next cafe where is the way. I really like this city ;-)

Tjai Tje,

Ricardo