Ryan is always navigator-in-chief in our household, but he outdid himself Tuesday on our first day in Beijing. He got us all three places we wanted to go with only a few hiccups.
Kate had warned us about a few basic travel quirks before we arrived:
1. Maps aren't really to scale. To get around this, Ryan sketched out his own maps in a Moleskine journal (he wisely agreed that it was best not to bring any reporter notebooks with him this time).
Kate had warned us about a few basic travel quirks before we arrived:
1. Maps aren't really to scale. To get around this, Ryan sketched out his own maps in a Moleskine journal (he wisely agreed that it was best not to bring any reporter notebooks with him this time).
Ryan's sketch of the area around the two temples we visited Tuesday morning.
2. Traffic laws are either non-existent or not enforced. Therefore, Kate advised us to cross the streets with extreme caution and with large groups whenever possible. Trusting the crosswalk signs is more of a suggestion you can try after all the turning cars and bikes have passed. At one point, we had to jump out of the way after a car turned onto the sidewalk where we were walking.
Even with Kate's warning, we were shocked by how truly terrible it is. Unsurprisingly, we found this fact in a Washington Post story: 220,000 traffic fatalities every year in China with a third as many cars as the United States.
Even with Kate's warning, we were shocked by how truly terrible it is. Unsurprisingly, we found this fact in a Washington Post story: 220,000 traffic fatalities every year in China with a third as many cars as the United States.
As you can see, bikes and cars don't really yield to pedestrians. About 10 seconds later, that bus on the left nearly took out three bikers. We have yet to see a helmet on a bike or scooter rider.
We can add a No. 3 to this list - the subway is pretty easy to use as a foreigner. Not that we were without any problems: The in-service subway ticket machine didn't work in either station we tried and there are metal detectors that bags must pass through before entering the station. But signs and announcements were done in English as well as Mandarin, and the non-working ticket machines even had an English option. It was much more accessible to foreigners than the subway in Paris. If you don't speak French in Paris, they don't really seem to care if you find your destination OK.
Considering that Ryan had to do all of the work to get us there, I'm not sure why I ended up photographed in front of the subway map.
Faithful readers, i.e. our parents, may notice that the horrid green raincoat has been replaced with a nice black one this year. Unfortunately it wasn't purely a fashion choice; it rained most of the day Tuesday.
-Elizabeth
-Elizabeth
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