Beijing

Traveled to Beijing from 6th May 2015 to 10th May 2015.

 

There were few assumtions which were made before this travel to China.
China is a developing country, there people have a very hard life. It's going to be hard to spend the even 5 days of travel.
To my surprise, I did not see much difference in Infrastructures, to the most developed western world. India must be around 15 years behind them. The people are very polite and most of them follow the rules. There is a huge corruption in the country.
All these does not stand any more.

 

First thing I notice is the Infrastructures - Massive roads, a 12 Lane road which connects Airport to the city, and which is around 25 Km's from the city. As you come near to the city, near every exit you face few queues, but it gradually gets eased out. The Beijing city has around 5 Ring roads around it. Each area is marked between which ring roads it is present. There are no junctions till you reach 2nd ring road from the express highway. Other than road, Airport has access via Trains. For the express highway till centre of the city you have to pay 10 yuan ( approx 100 Rs ). Comparing to Bangalore Express way to Airport, which is 4 lane infrastucture. Secondly the buildings, massive is a small word i would use. Every where you would see building with 30 / 40 floors on a average. People are less on the road to the infrasturcture they have on road. Every road is around 12 lane, and each one having bus bay, a small streach of beautiful flowers, very good roads, and not even a single pot holes on road. Clean on both sides of roads, I had seen people throwing few things on roads, but have to say in few minutes I see someone coming and cleaning them as well. I was amazed how massive would be their workforce.

 

People are very friendly, who still value their culture. It lookes like this country is also facing the fight between its old culture and its new westernisation youths. I thought I would see many people practicing Kung fu, drinking their chinese tea's, but found many people eating pizza and subways and prefering Diet Coke. Their is a huge Old age population which is forced to work, due to the rising economy, to cope up with the rising demand of working for living. Here as well the Westerners as seen as superior race. Felt they get the best of the world here.

 

Travelled around the City on the saturday, It was amazing, Had travelled to Great Wall of CHINA, My first assumption was Great wall of china was great beacuse it was so big, But realized it was not great because of it's size, It great because its really Long, and It just continues till all you can see with your eyes, among the Mountains. It's not so big, It's not even as big as Tipu Fort wall, But as it's on mountains one has to climb to reach the mountain and it you can climb all the nearby mountains walking on the great wall of China. It's not amazing that now even they can do wonderful Infrasturcture, as building the Sea Link of 150 kms in 6 years, where as we ( Indians ) cann't build even a simple flyover for 6 years.

 

We travelled to forbidden city, and missed entereing it as we thought we were already inside, but the fact was that we had not even entered Forbidden city and time was over to buy the tickets. Traffic was huge everywhere every day, but never saw wreakless driving and irresponsible driving, every one is waiting paitently for their turn to come. Basically people follow rules, and not jump signals. The City is having a huge grid of camera's or city servillance, I guess It's not simple to get away.

 

Shopping was the experience which would make you feel very happy. We had been to the Silk Market, where you feel so happy after shopping. This is the place you would see everyone happy. Here the prices are kept 10 times more, and you bargain hard. I hardly saw any localites shopping, But tourists have a gala time here. If you ask anything here you would be quoted 10 times of the real value. I would tell you how prices are bargained, withing a minute the price quoted as 100 yaun would have reached 10 yaun, when the real value would be mear 5 - 7 yaun. Still they would have made profit of 3 - 5 yaun, but you can see all sorts of drama there, The sales man getting angry, and then complimenting you for being a good husband/wife/ father. This trick works in all the Shops in the silk market. Just to check the prices I had checked the prices online after buying to know if I should have been really happy :-) .. The happy part is whatever purchase if made in india would have been costlier than what I had paid in China, but compared to online prices, I had paid 25% more. So was thinking that does importing to india makes it price more than 30%. Overall everyone goes home happy.

 

Over All a very developed country which claims to be developing and is underplaying its name ..