Just have time for a quick post. The picture is from a street market off Wangfujie a few blocks from the hotel. The market stretches for a very long Beijing block, probably a good 600 yards, of booth after booth selling all sorts of stuff. Most of which are not something I'd care to eat. The scorpions are obvious, I don't know what the heck those things to either side are!
Beijing has been quite different from my expectations. Not that my expectations were clear but I expected something quite foreign. In a lot of ways, it is. Almost everyone dresses in western styles. The people passing on the street wouldn't draw a second glance in any U.S. city. And there are a lot more signs and such with English on them than I expected.
But most people speak very little English if any. As a rule, taxi drivers do not speak any English. So to take taxis we have to get someone, either hotel or at work, to write the destination in Chinese characters. And we carry a card from the hotel with the hotel name and location in Chinese characters.
Everyone is either friendly or just ignores us as inconsequential.
More later.
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