Duck and cover
Unlike in the West, getting sun-tanned for a Chinese woman is a real tragedy. For comparison, it's as if you suddenly got pimples all over your face. Imagine what a shame it is. Everyone would think that you're sun-tanned because you're from a village and work in the field. And all the money you spent on countless whitening creams is wasted for nothing.
So if you left your umbrella at home, and you get suddenly attacked by the bright sun, you have to find something to cover with, and better find it quickly. Like a plastic washbowl, for example.
Funny Chinese translation
A couple of unrelated photos made today.
The first one is the door of the fire exit of a building in Shanghai. "Door is escaped with one's life in the fire fighting" gets an award for the worst Chinese-English translation ever!
The second is a Chinese brand of household stuff. Its tender name "Ebun" sounds amazingly funny for me as a Russian person, since it Russian "ebun" means "a fucker".
Idiot Tourist’s First Steps
When you arrive to a new city, the first thing you are pressed to do is to visit all the stupid standard sights, before you start doing something really interesting.
These standard sights in Beijing include the Tiananmen Square, Forbidden Palace and Mao's Mausoleum.
It's no use to tell about them again when there are millions of photos and thousands of pages of text written already. I'll just point out some interesting things.
In the 1990s, the Russian TV was showing a social ad with a phrase that became hugely popular - "Dima, wave your hand to your mother!" In this ad, a crowd of people was trying to convince a Kremlin guard to wave to his mother, but he couldn't - he was on duty.
Turns out Chinese soldiers guarding the central square of the country can even afford to drink a nice cup of tea, like the guy in this photo - see this Thermos cup to his left?
Another interesting activity is to try and find plain-clothes agents on Tiananmen Square. There's a bunch of them in Moscow, on Red Square and in Kremlin, too. One wrong step aside and they jump up to you - "Young man, this area is restricted".
For about 15 minutes I was watching a muscled guy who slowly walked in the square trying to look natural, sometimes taking photos of the same dull monument from different angles, and inspecting everyone around him with a professional look. He definitely wasn't going to leave the square.
In Mao's Mausoleum I nearly started giggling - when I looked at Mao's body similar to a wax doll (in fact, there is a wax copy of his body for emergency cases, so at any time you cannot be sure whether you are shown the original or a copy), a catchy internet phrase "That looks shopped" occured to me, and I felt like laughing so much that I had to quickly get out before I attracted attention of the guards. Indeed, the face looked like the work of a very unskilled photoshopper. I know, I'm bad, shouldn't laugh at this - even though Chinese people do not really believe too much in Communist ideology, their feelings for Mao are very deep, and it's definitely not the kind of personality cult you'd see in Soviet Russia or modern Russia - it's sincere.
Just in case, the Mausoleum is the tall rectangular building in the southern part of the square. We had two Swedish girls here who told me their story of horror: they didn't know about the Mausoleum and "just went the same way that everyone else was going", and ended up seeing "this corpse".
Later, when I was already leaving the square, I was confronted by a pushy granny selling warm hats and gloves. My mood being quite playful, I took out my own gloves and attacked the granny shouting "hallo! looka-looka! shi kuai!" (hello, look, look, ¥10!), waving the gloves in front of her face. The foe was instantly defeated and ran in dismay. I liked the effect and I'd recommend to use this method all the time when you come across these annoying guys in the streets.
Finally, the best of the sights near Tiananmen is Jingshan Park located to the north of the Forbidden Palace - the place that many tourists fail to reach (alas!).
Well, the thing is that according to feng shui (however much I hate the expression "according to feng shui"), the sweetest way to build an Emperor's palace is to the south of some hill. It also spares you of the problem with cold north winds. But when these guys built the Forbidden Palace back in 1420, they didn't have any suitable hill at hand. OK, let's just build one then, they thought, and they did - a 50-meter high hill made with just manual labour.
Having a hill in the middle of the city is so cool: you can see the whole ancient Forbidden Palace, and the skyscrapers district, and the one-storey historical downtown Beijing.
The results of this small walk are as follows:
Kilometers walked: 9
Taxi drivers told to get lost: 6
Fraud attempts: 3 — and all of the three wannabe fraudsters were men! I was so disappointed: earlier the fraud in downtown Beijing was attempted by pretty girls who were quite pleasant to talk with.
Photos of me taken by strangers: 2 - only two! I'm disappointed again. Earlier people were much more active in taking pictures with foreigners. Stupid Olympics, spoiled my country.
Doors in Beijing
One of the striking differences in everyday life of Beijing is what they use instead of doors now, when temperatures are far below zero.
I noticed two types of these ad hoc doors:
1) Thick heavy blankets made of rough cloth, with a window. Looks very barbaric and unaesthetic, but you'd be surprised at the number of places where you can see this - from entrances to public toilets and tiny shops to huge "European" supermarkets like Carrefour.
2) Transparent plastic curtains, sometimes so yellow and worn out that you cannot see through them. This type is used everywhere, too, from small shops to modern multi-storey malls.
Sometimes I come across a mixture of these two types, such as at the entrance to Tiananmen West subway station - see the photo on the left.
Why not install regular doors? The answer, I guess, is that the cold time in Beijing lasts for only a couple of months, and these improvised doors are removed later, while regular doors would only add problems in the warm time.
The place where I live
I'm living in the slums. Or the historical area. Depends on your attitude.
Most of Beijing's downtown is composed of hutongs - very narrow winding streets with one- or two-storey houses.
Unlike most other cities, the business district stands not in the middle of the city but a little bit aside.
The hutongs are centered around the Forbidden Palace (Emperor's dwelling, similar to Kremlin in Moscow) and Tiananmen square (the largest square in the world). I'm living within the Second Ring Road, which is a huge highway with about 20 lanes. It repeats the contour of the former city walls that were demolished long ago. The ring line of Beijing Subway goes under this Second Ring Road.
Most of the subway station names on the on the ring line (Line 2) end in -men: Dongzhimen, Xizhimen, Qianmen etc. "Men" means "gate" - these place once were the gates in the city walls that provided exits out of the protected capital. Now most of the gates do not exist anymore and huge highway junctions replace them.
I'm living just a minute away from the Lama Temple, an ancient centuries-old Tibetan temple. Shame on me - even though I walk past it every day, I never walked in to see it.
To the east is the Russian Embassy. It is as large as a small neighborhood, with many residential houses and well-guarded walls. Russian Embassy in Beijing is officially the largest diplomatic mission in the world, numbering 1500 people.
My tiny street (hutong) is called something like "2nd Gun Street" - that's because the place I live in is a former gun factory, converted into a warehouse, then a prison, and finally, into more or less usable residential space. So you can basically say that I live in a warehouse or in a prison.
There's 4 bunk beds in my room. Unlike people who stay here for a night or two, permanent residents are all colourful characters, as if from a book, and deserve some notes about each of them.
Ivan. A Vietnamese Canadian living in China. Hides away from the CIA. Prints, reads and writes something for the whole days. Prefers to joke that he is a double agent when asked about his job. A huge fan of Russia, likes to put on a record of the Russian anthem or Putin's speeches. Hates Jews and likes China as one of the few countries in the world (the three others being North Korea, Iran and Russia) not controlled by the Jews.
Marjo. A hot (as she reasonably calls herself) Filipino woman, came to China for work even though the salary is the same as at home. Works as an English teacher at places that cannot afford a native English speaker. Devotes her free time to romantic internet chats. Tried to avoid her marriage in all possible ways and then ran away from her husband and her child - exactly what men usually do. Just like me, she cannot stay in one place and with one person for a long time.
Nathan. A typical foreigner in China - studies Chinese and teaches English. The only person here to have meaningful conversations with - partly due to being a native English speaker. Probably a Jew, so we have a nice company here: a guy who hates Russia (me), a Vietnam War veteran, a Vietnamese guy who loves Russia and hates Jews, and a Jew, the most reasonable person. Absolutely no tensions though.
Shasha. My favourite character in our little family, a charming girl from Hong Kong. Worked as a shop assistant for 2000 USD per month. After 10 years of working, decided to take a long break and tour China from Tibet to Harbin. Very successfully tries to resemble anime characters in her manner of voice and behaviour. Never stops smiling and shouting "bye-bye" and "hello" in a most "kawaii" way. I initially thought she was not more than 18, but she's 28. Keeps a backpackfull of ultramodern gadgets, just like a typical Hong Konger. Despite earning $2000, she can quarrel for ages with taxi drivers about extra 3 yuan (35 cents), and knows where to buy cheaper and how to fool vending machines - just like a typical Chinese.
Tom. An old guy from California, formerly a dentist. Jokes a lot and keeps talking quietly, as if to himself, trying to attract attention. Won my respect by admitting that he's a pilot - flies his own Cessna 150. Already purchased an electric bike and a motorcycle in Beijing. Being my age, wanted nearly became a hippie but went to the Vietnam War instead. Came to China for no special reason and for no definite period, just like the most of us.
What's interesting is that people from Mainland China are not allowed to stay in one room with us. And this place is not the only one with this rule. I have no idea why - it's either regulations or we, the foreigners, are carefully guarded against savage Chinese.
This little company of ours is just like a family - we're having dinners together, going together to see the sights, and learning more and more about each other.
It's not the way most people would like to live, but I like it and I'm probably not going to move any time soon.