Beijing

Walking through the city at night felt eerily similar to scenes from Blade Runner.  The high-tech micro vehicles, looped advertisements playing from speakers outside many shops or restaurants trying to lure you in, and even the sound of the tiny garbage trucks with vocal back up indicators trying to navigate through the narrow alleys all strongly resembled many Sci-Fi films portraying dystopian cities of the future. But what is really hard to comprehend is the scale of things in China.  The buildings are enormous, the highways are efficient and uncongested and the high-speed railways that flow like a ribbon through the countryside are all very impressive.  Even the metro/subway systems are well designed and offer larger coverage than those in cities in Canada.

Even harder to wrap your head around is the population density so here’s some stats.  Feel free to take some time to let it sink in…

• The population of Beijing is 21.54 million.
• Shanghai is 24.21 million.

That is more people in one city than all of Ontario, Alberta, and BC combined!

Those two cities together have 8.6 million more people than the entire population of Canada.

And during Chinese New Year, those numbers swell even higher from an influx of mostly domestic travelers from slightly smaller mega-cities or other remote areas of the country.

I had always wondered what it was really like to be stuck in crowds of people in China and it’s so much worse than I imagined.  I went on plenty of tours in the first couple weeks and it was impossible to get much enjoyment from them when you’re stuck in huge lines or crowds of slow people that stop all of sudden to take selfies. I think I now understand why so many people here have smashed cell phone screens and I’m sure walking slow probably helps minimize the consequences of those eventual impacts due to obliviousness.

At first, I would be kind and move out of the way but now I just let people walk right into me and man do they ever get startled and pissed that I didn’t move.  I’m amazed I don’t have bruises for hard boney shoulders have smacked my arms.

The day after arriving in Beijing, I got a nasty cold so I didn’t do much the next couple days so I missed some opportunities for exploring Beijing’s sights. Chinese New Year had started and now some tours were closed and the rest were crazy busy or booked completely.

One place I couldn’t get into was the Forbidden Palace as it was already sold out for the upcoming week and I couldn’t get tickets at the gate either.  They sell only 80,000 tickets per day.

Because of the Great Firewall, messenger apps like Facebook and Whatsapp don’t work without a VPN tunnel.  In its place are Wechat and also related to Wechat is Alipay.  At first I though this was dumb but I quickly realized how much of an inconvenience it is to not use those two Chinese apps.  The most common form of payment is using one of these two apps and it is very convenient.  You just scan a QR code at a place you’re at and pay for an item or order without pulling out your wallet.  However, they are dependent on having a Chinese bank account so their functionality is limited for foreigners.  Fortunately, old-fashioned cash was accepted everywhere I went but that isn’t always the case.

After taking a couple days to get over my cold, I booked a tour to one of China’s most famous attractions, the Great Wall of China.