Tianamen Square Never Felt so Cold

February 17th, 2006

Welcome to Beijing! I can tell from minute 1 that I like Hong Kong better. However, Hong Kong isn’t really China, so Beijing is a necessary and exciting part of my exchange.

After a very bumpy and definitely more eventful flight than I like to have, my STs and I landed in Beijing. The trickster cabbies couldn’t trap us into taking an expensive cab ride thanks to our trusty travel guides. I wouldn’t recommend picking a restaurant out of one of our guides (the restaurants are all out of business by the time they make print), but the guides are pretty good at navigating and experiences.

Beijing is COLD. I don’t mean Chapel Hill or Charlotte cold. I mean COLD. Not to worry though, I purchased some North Face gloves and a hat with a Kangaroo that is supposed to be popular too. I’m sure neither purchase was a fake even if they did cost a combined 4 USD. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Tiananmen Square is pretty cool. I don’t know much about the history other than I remember my Dad telling me that I was watching history during the riots there in the late 80’s. Researching the riots is on my list of To-Do’s. One would think I could have researched the riots while in China but with China’s revisionist history, I’d prefer to use a legitimate resource. Besides, China openly admits to tracking internet activity and prohibits its people from watching BBC or CNN. I bet the US conservatives with they could enact the same laws in the states! J Folks, I think I’m becoming more liberal every day. Don’t worry though, I still wear my fiscal conservatism like a badge of honor. I’d probably be thrown out of business school otherwise.

Our final stop on our first night was the famous food street market outside of our hotel. The food was 50/50… 50 percent excellent and 50 percent untouchable with a pole of any length. Think whole baby squirrels and scorpions on a stick. Not kidding, people, not kidding! The mystery meat English muffin/ biscuit like sandwich was by far the winner of the evening. The only thing close was the roasted brulee’d strawberries. The roasted corn would have made excellent popcorn, but I can’t think of any other decent uses for it.